Sucks To Be ME
by platowasabore
Summary: Around the time that I found myself standing over the silently writhing Jared, the most popular guy in school, on the ground after i just kicked him in the groin one thought made itself most prominent in my mind 'Why me' Kim/Jared
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer- Nope, not mine.**

**Prologue**

**"My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the misery I've endured over the past twenty-five years."**

**-**Paul Merton

I've been going to school for exactly eleven years, five months and twenty-one days. It stands to reason that after dedicating that kind of time to an institution that you're going to pick up a few things and I'm no exception. So in my time here at the La' Push High this is what I've learned.

One: If I choose to buy my lunch in the cafeteria I must be armed with a net, helmet and some sort of protective eyewear and be fully prepared to catch whatever alien like substance they plop on my tray when it inevitably tries to make a run for it. (No I'm not kidding. I got a sloppy joe once that scampered right off my plate and into some poor unsuspecting girls lap. Luckily that girl was Amy Fink so at least I got a good laugh out of it even if I did end up having to go hungry.)

Two: Girls who are just shy of six feet tall and have roughly the same shape and build of a professional football player won't exactly be the most popular girls in class. We will however get picked first for teams in basketball only to disappoint the rest of our team when we spend the class period watching the clock and flinching away from the ball.

Three: You can just go right ahead and discount about half of everything you learn whether it be because it's useless or stupid. For example: Useless- That one lab where they make you dissect some poor little froggy who up until about two days ago was hoping around and minding his own business and all you can think about the whole time is how much you used to love Kermit when you were a kid. What's the point in that? How many of us are actually going to grow up to be some sort of amphibian surgeon? Stupid- In elementary school when they taught us to line up according to height in case of a fire drill. How does that make sense? Do tall people burn more slowly than others?

Four: Every school will inevitably have some clichéd popular clique who treat the rest of us only marginally better than Hitler treated the Jews. If you ask me the only reason they even do that is because they haven't been successful in convincing the principal to use the money meant for the music program to buy those gas chambers they've had their eyes on just yet.

Five: Guys like Jared don't go for girls like me. At least that's what I thought.


	2. Chapter 1: Thou shalt not weigh more tha

Disclaimer- Yes, I've actually turned into Stephanie Meyer over night. Dreams do come true.

A/N- Warning- this chapter is totally random and plotless but I just like to start off my stories getting to know the character. Bare with me.

Chapter One: Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.

"One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends is that three out of four murders are committed by people who know the victim."-- George Carlin

"Ow."

"Oh, suck it up."

"Ow."

"Just three more."

"I SAID OW, DAMN IT!!!"

Sara threw her hands up in the manner of exasperated best friends everywhere before shooting me an extremely annoyed look. The nerve of her! Like _I _had shoved _her _leg into some sort of medieval torture device. Needless to say I thought this was a little unfair so I told her so.

"It's not a torture device, Kim. It's a workout machine and I would really appreciate it if you would stop giving me hell over every repetition and just stick those freakishly long legs of yours into place and push up the fucking weights!"

As any sane, self respecting woman would I took offense to that. My legs are not freakishly long. They are however perfectly normal for someone of my abnormal height of five foot eleven. At least that's what I think my height is. I've been avoiding measuring myself for fear of having finally passed the dreaded six foot mark but I have a sneaking suspicion that another inch or two might have snuck past me during a late in life growth spurt.

Sara continued to glare at me all while ignoring the confused glances that the gym frequenters were shooting our way. It goes with out saying that people like Sara and I don't belong here but when Sara had shown up at my door in full work out gear, headbands and wrist bands included, I didn't have the heart to say no. It was going to take at least a week for her to get this out of her system which means that I can look forward to several more afternoons like this.

This is just one of the many times that I've wanted to kill Amy Fink.

Sara and I were sitting at our usual spot in the cafeteria when the fearsome foursome decided that we would be the perfect choice for their next victim.

Let me back track and do a little explaining first. The fearsome foursome consists of Amy Fink, Shandra Adams, Sean Adams (In case you didn't figure it out for yourselves Shandra and Sean are brother and sister, Shandra was a junior and Sean was a senior. I know: Shandra and Sean. They didn't have the most creative of parents) and Jared Thail. They've earned their title by generally making the lives of us 'lesser' people miserable since elementary school. In the first grade they threw dog food at Cathy McNeil during recess and to this day still call her iams. In the fifth grade they pretended to be friends with Chelsea Diamond before dumping her on her ass at the end of school dance. In the ninth grade they took pictures of some of the chubbier girls in class while they were changing for Gym and posted them through out the school. To make a long story short they were your basic garden variety of evil.

Taking all of this into account I wasn't exactly shocked to hear Amy's grating high pitch voice ringing across the Cafeteria towards Sara during lunch.

"Jesus, Sally, I really don't think you of all people need to be eating that!" Amy and Shandra both looked at the sandwich Sara had in front of her with looks of equal disgust while Jared and Sean stood behind them looking bored.

Sara had looked down at her plate and had mumbled something about her name not being Sally. When it came to people she didn't know very well Sara had always had a hard time standing up for herself. Luckily I have no such qualms.

"You're right, Amanda, it really should be you eating that sandwich but seeing as your diet consists mainly of diet soda and laxatives I don't think that'll happen." I watched in amusement as Amy went red in the face and behind her Jared snorted but tried to turn it into a cough when Shandra turned to glare at him.

The exchange went on from there but to make a long story short I'll just tell you that Amy called Sara fat and I dumped my milk all over Amy's new Betty Johnson skirt that she had been bragging about in homeroom. Good times good times.

And that, my friends, is why we are here now. Here being La' Push's sorry-ass excuse for a gym. There are like twelve machines, I'm not even kidding. Anyway Sara believed Amy when she called her fat even though she swears up and down that nothing that bitch says can effect her. And the thing is Sara isn't even fat. Not really. She's just a little chubbier, a fact that was accentuated by her five foot one height.

I opened my mouth to defend the length of my legs to Sara but before I could get the words out Tiffany collapsed on to the work out bench next to me. If by collapsed I meant threw herself onto dramatically . And if by workout bench I meant medieval torture device number two.

"Water!" Tiffany gasped while sucking in huge lungfullls of breath.

"What the hell happened to you?" I asked, ignoring Sara when she huffed in annoyance at being distracted from our 'workout' *coughtorturesessioncough*.

Tiff didn't answer me but instead just shut her eyes and shook her head as if the answer to my question was simply to painful to say aloud and continued to draw in uneven breaths.

"Treadmill." Ally said wisely while coming up from behind me to hand Tiffany a bottle of water.

Tiffany jerked the bottle of water out of Ally's hand, spraying us all in the process, before gulping down her first sip…before spitting it all out onto the floor next to her.

"What the hell is this?" she looked disgusted and started to try to wipe the flavor off of her tongue using the back of her hand.

"That's water, you idiot." Ally looked down on the new puddle of water Tiff had made on the floor and looked back up at Tiffany, unimpressed.

Tiffany looked aghast, "You know I don't drink that stuff! Where is my coke?"

Sara shifted her weight impatiently from foot to foot, "They don't sell soda at the gym." she said blandly.

I winced and started to distant my self from the rant that was about to follow and tried to look like I wasn't with them.

"They don't sell soda," Tiffany spoke slowly as if she was only repeating it to try and have it make sense. "What kind of place have you taken me to!? I've walked for the last thirty minutes only to get nowhere and now you're telling me there's nothing to drink?!"

Our fellow Gym patrons started to shoot our small group concerned glances and I heard one woman in a hot pink track suit murmur something to her companion about calling security. I turned to pick up a hand weight stationed on the rack sitting behind me hoping that if I looked busy I could distract myself from the unwanted attention we were receiving. I curled my fingers around the first weight my hand hit while keeping one eye of the argument ensuing in front of me. When I went to pull the weight out of it's notch my hand suddenly zoomed to the ground along with the extremely heavy weight it still held and landed directly on my big toe. I shrieked as my poor unsuspecting toe was crushed under the weight of what I now knew to be a fifty pound barbell.

Needless to say this did nothing to rid myself of the attention of La' Push's more fit residents. Neither did hoping around on one foot screaming 'my toe, my poor abused toe' apparently. Go figure.

Sara and Tiffany didn't so much as glance my way, "What do you mean 'there's nothing to drink'?! There's water!"

Tiff scoffed at Sara's logic, "Be serous! I can't drink that stuff!"

Sara then proceeded to lay into Tiffany about her soda addiction and how it was such a waste of calories while I all but writhed around on the ground in pain.

Ally rolled her eyes before dragging me away to sit down on a slanted bench for sit-ups and peeling off my shoe and sock. She had always been the most nurturing and motherly of us.

I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my face away from the sight that I was sure would be riddled with blood and guts, "How bad is it?"

"It's not bad at all." she assured me.

"Oh, god they're going to have to amputate it, aren't they?" Damn it! Why do these things always have to happen to me? The big toe is by far my favorite of all the toes! It's like the king toe! I can't walk around for the rest of my life missing the king toe!

I heard Ally sigh from somewhere in front of me. I'm not sure where though because I still hadn't opened my eyes yet. What right did she have to be sighing? I'm about to loose a limb (Oh alright, not a limb but the best toe!) and she was _sighing _at me?

"You know it isn't at all polite to sigh at your soon-to-be-nine-toed friend." I informed her while squinting open one eye to glare at her with.

"Why are you going to have only nine toes?" Tiffany asked having apparently finished her argument with Sara who had gone over to a different machine to work on and ignore us at.

"Isn't it obvious?" I said in a pained voice and used one hand to gesture at my injured foot.

"There's five toes on that foot, Kim." Tiff spoke slowly as if talking to a mentally disturbed person.

"Yeah, there are five _now._"

"Why wouldn't there be five?"

"They're going to have to amputate one."

"Who's going to amputate one and why?"

I sighed and decided to face the music and open my eyes to survey the damage. I took a deep breath and braced myself to see my toes hanging off the rest of my foot by a few thin pieces of flesh and skin. Instead I saw my big toe looking more or less the same as always except for a small pink mark about half an inch wide.

"Oh…well, alright then." I scooped my sock and shoe up off the floor and shoved them back on before going to check on Sara.

Ow. I hate Sara. And I'm definitely going to have to Kill Amy. Maybe I can come up with some way to make her accidentally gain five pounds. Then she would surely kill herself.

I was mumbling all of this under my breath while I entered my house through the front door and bent down to rip off my shoes much to the protest of my aching muscles. Ally had dropped me off in front of my drive way. Although I'm not really sure if what we do actually counts as dropping off seeing as she lives right next door to me and I do mean _right next door_. I could through something from my bedroom window into hers if I wanted to. Not that I want to but if I did I could.

But she's not the only one. We all live right next door to one another: me, Ally, Sara, and Tiffany. It's how we met. When you're a kid you're friends with whoever is on the block and in our case the friendship just stuck past the kid years and into the teenage years. A basically unheard of feet. I'm not even sure why it stuck. We mostly just argue with each other whenever we're together, which is pretty much every waking moment.

"Kimmy! Is that you?" my mothers voice floated out of the kitchen and reached my ears where I was standing in the entrance hall.

"No, mother! It's just you average everyday burglar, pay me no mind." I called back before dragging my tired and sore ass into the kitchen where i found a sight I didn't like at all. "Oh, my god. Mom! What are you doing?!"

"I'm cooking, honey." she said with an air of somebody who was speaking to a slightly slow person who was threatening to have a fit.

"Put down the pan and step away from the stove." I stepped forward with slow measured steps to take the spatula out of my mother's hands .

My mother stood there, now empty handed, and watched me with a partly amused and partly confused look on her face. "Why?"

"You remember what happened last time, don't you?"

"That was a fluke and besides, we needed new cabinets anyway." she said with a sniff before turning back to the pan.

I snorted and scooted behind her to reach into the fridge to grab a soda. She's gonna be the one to pay for it if she ends up burning down half the kitchen…again.

"Where were you?"

"The gym." I said this already anticipating her reaction. I wasn't disappointed.

"Gym?," my mother turned away from the frying pan to stare at me skeptically.

"Sara made me go." I defended before she could spit out any sly accusations.

My mother has always been one of those moms who were unnaturally obsessed with her kids social lives. Seeing as I'm an only child this means that she's unnaturally obsessed with _my _social life. If you could call it that. I've been hanging out with the same four girls since I was two. I've never dated although a couple of guys around town have shown interest. I'm not a cheerleader or an athlete. They'd sooner elect Freddy Kruger for prom queen than me. And unless detention counts as an extracurricular activity I'm not heavily involved at school.

You can imagine my mother's disappointment.

Taking all this into account you can understand my hesitance to tell my mother of my previous whereabouts. She'd think it was some sort of code for a wild and hot party I didn't want to tell her about. Which would be odd considering it's not even six at night on a Tuesday, but it's best that I don't even try logic with my mother. She never did know the meaning of the word.

She turned back to her food (fajitas it looked like…or maybe fajitas long-distance retarded cousin), "Sara? Since when does she go to the gym?"

"Since Amy Fink called her fat in front of half the school."

I know it probably seems weird to most to be talking to my mother this we but we were strangely close. Well, maybe not so strangely. We don't like sleep in the same bed or share a toothbrush. Nothing weird like that. But there's still a certain level of closeness that is to be expected. It had been just us for almost five years now.

My mother went into some random tangent about having self-confidence and not letting what other people say effect you. I tuned her out. She does this a lot.

"I agree completely, mom." I interrupted. "I'll tell Sara next time I see her. Well, I'm off to do my homework now. See you."

I scrammed out of the room before she could go off on some feminist tirade about feeling beautiful no matter what and not trying to confirm to the societal ideology of beauty. I'm a feminist too, but sometimes my mother just doesn't know when to stop talking…well, most of the time she doesn't.

A/N- Ok, I really have no idea where I'm going with this story. I'm just so sick of all these stories where Kim is some lovesick pushover and I thought a change of pace might be nice. Let me know if you agree. I promise, there will be more Jared in the next chapter.

Reviews make me happy. When I'm happy I write. Thus review and I'll update.


	3. Chapter 2: Maybe this world is another p

Disclaimer- If I was Stephanie Meyer I certainly wouldn't be writing this crap.

A/N- Thank you to those special few who reviewed. I love you all with a passion that is actually quite weird in a lot of ways. As to the rest of you….I can update rather slowly when I have the mind to. Yes, that is a threat. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Chapter 2: Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.

"If a choice were given him between suffering death and living his early years over again, who would not shudder and choose death?"-Augustine

"Coffee."

"Well, good morning to you too, sunshine."

"Coffee."

You'd think that after fifteen years of being friends with somebody they would understand that you simply can't indulge in frivolous greetings and conversation until you've had your coffee. *Sigh* I hate morning people. I really do.

"Here." Ally thrust a large cup of steaming hot elixir of the gods under my nose dressed in a takeout container from the corner stop and shop.

I murmured something that might have been a thank you at her. To be honest I didn't even really know. The coffee had already touched my tongue and that had effectively turned off all of my thought process. Is there anything, I ask you, in this world better than coffee? I think not. I haven't really gotten around to having sex yet but there's no way it could beat this. I don't care what anybody says.

I wonder how much trouble it would be to have this golden goodness, also known as coffee, administered to me intravenously daily.

After downing half the cup I once again became aware of my surroundings. Ally was humming quietly to herself while she pulled out of my driveway. Tiffany was starting in on what was probably her second soda of the morning and Sara was reading the nutrition facts on the back of a box of powdered donuts. Ooh, donuts.

"Hey, give me one of those if all you're going to do is stare at it." I reached to my left where Sara was sitting and grabbed the box out of her hands.

This was our regular seating schedule. Sara and I in the back seat, Tiffany in the front passenger seat and Ally driving. Tiffany always gets to ride shot gun because technically the car belongs to her. She has two majorly guilt ridden parents who spend about eighty percent of their time working and gave this car to her as compensation under the disguise of a sixteenth birthday present. The only problem is that Tiffany never did learn how to drive although she does have a license. She says the only reason she passed is because she wore a short skirt and flirted with the instructor. Knowing Tiffany this isn't at all hard to believe.

"Oh, give me one!" Tiff twisted around in her seat and grabbed a donut out of the box for herself and another one to hand to Ally.

Sara sighed and grabbed the box out of my hands, "We really shouldn't be eating these. Do you have any idea how many calories there are in one donut." She didn't wait for us to answer. By now we all learned to just ignore her junk food inspired rants that always came before she gave in and ate whatever it was she was ranting about. "Two-hundred and fifty calories! For just one little donut. It's really not worth it. Besides, I'm on a diet."

Sara had been on diets for as long as I could remember. Usually brought on by the urging of her mother. If you ask me she wouldn't be so uncomfortable with her weight if her mother would just stop calling her fat and trying to shove lettuce down her throat. Up until three years ago Sara used to go to fat camp every summer while her mother told everyone it was girl scout camp. Before high school started Sara threatened to tell everyone in town that she had been going to fat camp if her mother tried to make her go again.. Worked like a charm. Mrs. Burnheart, Sara's mother, is always going on and on about the importance of 'image'.

'You don't need to go on a diet." I mumbled through my second mouthful of donut. It turns out there is something better than coffee. That something, my friends, is called coffee _and_ donuts.

"Yes, I do! Look at me, I'm so fat." Sara reached down to pinch a role of flesh on her stomach.

"You're not fat!" Tiffany and I rang out at the same time. This we were also used to expecting from Sara.

Sara opened her mouth to dispute this, probably with another declaration of her fatness, but Ally interrupted her from the drivers seat.

"We're here!" Ally called cheerfully while pulling into an empty space towards the back of the school parking lot.

Everything about Ally has always been done in a cheerful and motherly type of way. She's the oldest of six kids and has the whole momma thing down pat. She's usually the one who gets stuck babysitting every night and does the cleaning and cooking at her house. Ally's mother died a few years back so she has to help out her dad a lot around the house since he owns his own law practice and is busy most of the time.

La' Push high is actually an old rundown courthouse. The elder tribal members used to convene here until it was turned into a high school some fifty years back. Since then a lot of additions have been made to make it larger and easier to separate into classrooms. As a result the school came out to have a very odd shape. Kind of like an octopus. The old courthouse in the middle with long extensions reaching out from it in different areas. Inside the middle is the office, gym, cafeteria and library. The classrooms lie in the extensions with lockers lining the already narrow hallways.

Here at La' Push high we have a staggering student body of one hundred and seventy five students and fifteen faculty members. The basketball coach is also the football coach, geometry teacher and even the librarian on Tuesdays. Our basketball team has five members and has never actually played a game that I'm aware of. Same goes for the football team. They're less like teams and more like clubs really.

Some would say that this makes the school cozy. I personally think it makes the school hell-like. But that's just me.

Because of it's small size everybody at the school knows everybody else's business, gossip can travel roughly as fast as the speed of light, the unpopular are well known through out the school so it's easier to mock them, and the same goes for the popular only minus the mocking. This way everyone can worship and fear them without any confusion as to who the popular are. Convenient, huh?

'Ok, well I'm off you all. Toodles!" Tiffany waggled her fingers in a parting signal and made her way over to a group of boys leaning up against the gym wall. That girl makes flirting an art-form.

"Same for me. I have to turn in that extra credit Mrs. Harper gave me before class starts. See you guys at lunch." Ally turned and ran off in the direction of the math and sciences building.

Sara sighed, "Well, I have to go get my stuff out of my locker and considering that's so far it's more or less in Forks I better get a move on. Bye." She dashed off to the Arts and Music hall where her locker was, leaving me standing in front of the school all alone with students milling in all around me.

Normally I wouldn't mind this at all but just as all of them rounded out of sight Shandra's voice reached my ears, bringing up roughly the same reaction that dogs have to those special whistles. Oh, joy. Just what I like to start my mornings off with: Coffee and evil. Perfect.

"Looking lonely there, Amazon. Where did your fellow losers run off to?"

Hey, I never did say she was witty.

I turned to face the parking lot where her voice had carried from, already fairly certain as to what I'd find. I wasn't disappointed. Shandra stood with a proud look on her face and Jared standing to her left. Jared wore the standard guy uniform of jeans and a black t-shirt while Shandra was wearing a barely there white tank top and a hot pink leather mini-skirt. How she doesn't freeze is beyond me.

If Shandra is speaking that means Amy isn't with her. Amy wouldn't dare let her little lap dog speak. Judging by the fact that Sean was also missing I took a guess that they were somewhere making out.

This in and of itself is pretty odd because to the best of my knowledge Amy wants Jared. As does Shandra so it's rare that Amy would leave the two of them alone together even if not leaving them alone would mean missing out on some quality make out time with her fall back boy toy.

"I'm not the only one looking a little lonely. Where's your master, Fido? Busy up-chucking her breakfast I assume?"

Shandra shifted her weight from foot to foot looking angry and a little confused. Probably about the Fido comment. If Lindsay Lohan or Ashton Kutcher isn't in it chances are her crowd haven't seen it. Luckily the bell sounded from the building behind us saving her from the embarrassment of having to come up with a comeback. Chances are she'll have one ready by lunch. So, instead, she just casted a disdainful look my way and shoved past me…or she tried to anyway. As previously mentioned I'm quite sturdy so when she tried to do the patented shoulder shove she ended up stumbling back and almost falling over.

Needless to say this was _hilarious. _Apparently Jared thought so to if the way he laughed out loud while helping her stand straight was any indication. Jackass. I guess he's not even nice to the people he _actually _likes. In fact I seem to recall him being nicer to me when he was just pretending to like me.

Then again, I suppose that's what made him such a good actor at the time.

A/N (number one)- I'm sorry this chapter was so short but I really just needed to lay some ground work and explain the characters a little before I can start getting to the juicy stuff. I'm also sorry that so far there hasn't been very much Jared action or even any Jared lines. I'm working on it but every time I try to make him speak I get total brain freeze and can't come up with anything for him to say. I'll make it up to you though. Believe me, you can expect plenty of juice. You'll be leaking for days, there's so much juiciness.

A/N (number two) - Just so you guys know I survive off of reviews so if you don't review I'll die. And if I die who's going to update your precious story then? Hmmm?

REVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEW….and….REVIEW.


	4. Chapter 3: See no evil, hear no evil, da

Disclaimer- We'll put it this way. I own it no more today than I did yesterday. Make of that what you will.

Chapter 3- See no evil, hear no evil, date no evil.

Mrs. Hudson's geometry class was the worst part of my day for a multitude of reasons. For one it's directly to the left of the cafeteria so having to deal with that lovely aroma is just one of my daily trials. Secondly, math or anything math related isn't exactly where I shine. I'm much more of an English and literature type of girl. And last, but certainly not least, _he's _in this class.

Jared Thail.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Out of the Fearsome Foursome he's probably the least threatening of them all. I mean, come on, he just stands in the background and does nothing. How bad can he be?

Yeah, well, I thought the same thing. That was my mistake.

*************************************************************************************************************************

(Freshman Year Flashback)

"_This can't be happening." I said to the girls who were lounging around at various points in my bedroom._

_Sara was sitting on the edge of my computer chair, absently playing with a paperclip. Tiffany was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of my bed dragging a piece of string around in front of Nutter-Butter (my cat) who was watching the string with a surprisingly dubious look on his little feline face. Ally was sitting on my window seat watching me with a concerned expression._

"_What can't be happening?" Tiffany stood up, abandoning her sting and plopped herself onto the bed next to me where I was lying staring up at the ceiling still reeling with shock. Nutty pounced triumphantly on the piece of string that was left behind._

"_I can't even say it out loud." I flipped on to my stomach and rested my chin on my pillow._

_No I certainly couldn't. This was too amazing to be true. Things like this just don't happen to girls like me. Girls who are almost six feet tall and built like Vikings don't get asked out by guys like _him. _If I tried to say it out loud I would surely wake up from this dream and if this was in fact a dream I didn't ever want to wake up._

"_Well, if you're not going to say it out loud that certainly puts a damper on this conversation." Sara left the chair, stepped over Nutty, pushed my feet out of the way and sat in the space they vacated at the end of my bed next to Tiff._

"_Sweetheart, you'll have to eventually tell us." Ally lifted herself from the window seat and came over to join us on my small double bed, leaning up against the headboard._

"_No," I stubbornly sat up, sat Indian style and hugged my smiley face pillow to my chest._

_All during this exchange the same mantra was playing in my head; _This isn't happening, this isn't happening, this isn't happening, this isn't happening….

"_Ok, how about this," Tiff jumped up and ran over to my desk. She grabbed my heart and peace sign covered notebook and my fluffy topped pen before turning back to me again, "If you can't say it then you can still write it, right?" _

_They all turned to stare at me, waiting for an answer. I considered it. I heard somewhere that you couldn't read or write in dreams. Well, this was as good a way as any to figure out if this was really happening or not._

_I held out my hand for the notebook and pen. They all straightened up and watched me impatiently while I put the pen to the paper. Tiffany tried to shift to look but I leaned away from her and shot her a warning look. She held up her hands in surrender and stopped trying to peak. _

Jared Thail asked me to the homecoming dance.

_Well, I could read and write so I guess I wasn't dreaming. I handed the notebook over to Sara. The three of them scurried over to her side of the bed to read over her shoulder._

" '_Jared Thail asked me to the homecoming dance' ," Sara read slowly, like she was trying to make sense of it….then… "_JARED THAIL ASKED YOU TO THE HOMECOMING DANCE?"

_I glance over to my bedroom door, expecting my over-eager mother to come running in at the prospect of my beginning to date but quickly remembered that she was pulling a double shift tonight. Dodged that bullet._

_It had happened in the hallway as I was leaving World History class. I was trying to write the homework in my planner and walk at the same time. Jared was leaning up against the lockers surrounded by Amy, Shandra and Sean. They were all speaking to each other in hushed voices and shooting the occasional glances at me. I quickly diverted my gaze from them. They weren't the once you wanted to piss of and I certainly wasn't going to be the one to do just that._

_In my haste to look away and still writing in my planner I ended up tripping over Mr. Brauc's door stopper. All my books went flying to the ground and I soon followed. I had hit my elbow on the way down and may have twisted my ankle a bit._

_Needless to say this isn't what worried me at the moment, thought. What I was worried about then was the fact that I was holding up hallway traffic and everyone was staring at me. Me. The giant hulking monstrosity that couldn't even _walk _right._

_I scrambled around on the ground, frantically trying to gather my belongings. I reached for my science notebook when a tanned hand sweeped down and picked it up. I looked up to find the owner of the hand. Oh my god. This isn't happening. Please tell me this isn't real. Jared Thail did not just see me trip like a fool._

_I was squinting my eyes closed and trying to will myself away from the situation when he spoke, "I believe this belongs to you."_

_I slowly lifted my head to meet his eyes but found that I couldn't quite make it. Instead I stared at his chin. His perfect, chiseled chin. Had there even been such a good looking chin as this, I wondered._

_I ducked my head forward, using my hair to hide my flaming face, when I realized that I had been staring at his chin like it was the freaking holy grail. "Um…Thanks." I mumbled and took the notebook from his hands._

_Umm..THANKS??!!? God! What is the matter with me? I should have come up with something witty and charming to say that would have surely had him enthralled. Maybe made a joke about my own clumsiness. Anything but ummm.. Thanks! _

"_No problem." Jared ran a hand threw his hair and glanced back over to his friends who were watching us with a strange glint in their eyes. _

_He was probably dying to get back to them and away from me. I was just about to excuse myself so he would have an out to leave when he spoke again._

"_Look, Karen-" he began._

_Karen? Who the hell was Karen? It took me a minute to realize that that was me. Karen had never seemed like a lovelier name than it did at this moment. Despite this he should probably know this isn't my actual name. Just so there's no confusion when he signs the marriage certificate._

"_It's Kim, " I interrupted timidly before chancing a glance at his face again, keeping my eyes firmly away from his chin. He wasn't looking at me but instead was staring at the lockers behind my head looking…..guilty? Huh?_

"_Yeah, whatever. Look, do you want to go to the dance with me?"_

_I just stood there staring at him and waiting for the punch line. Then none came. He couldn't be serous! Could he?_

_A full minute had passed since he had asked and I just stood there staring at him with my mouth open wide like I was at the flipping dentists office. _

"_Karen? Well, do you?"_

_I absentmindedly nodded an affirmative while wondering just how weird it would seem if I threw myself into his arms. Probably pretty wired. Weird enough to ruin all of this anyway._

"_Great. I'll meet you there at seven. See you then, Karen." With that he was gone, disappearing around the bend in the hall with his friends in tow._

_I was only slightly aware of the late bell ringing._

_Oh, my god._

_Jared Thail had just asked me out…..Holy shit._

_Back in the present my three friends where all in various states of frenzy. Tiffany was jumping up and down on my bed screaming, "Oh my god!!! He is so HOT!!!"_

_Sara was bouncing excitedly in place while still sitting. At least I think she was bouncing excitedly. It might have just been Tiff's jumping. "He's a sophomore! An older man!"_

_Tiffany gasped and collapsed into a sitting position on the foot of my bed, watching me eagerly, "You know what this means, don't you? You, Kim, are dating the most popular guy in school! He's a sophomore! Not to mention completely delicious looking! " a look of shock registered on her face, "Oh my god! He can drive!" _

_This revelation started Sara and Tiff in on another screaming frenzy. It wasn't until then that it occurred to me that one member of our group was strangely missing in this conversation. Ally had moved herself back over to the window seat and was hugging her knees to her chest. She was watching me , only me completely ignoring Tiffany's and Sara's hysterics, with an odd look of worry on her face._

_I extracted myself from the group hug that the shrieking Tiffany and Sara had felt compelled to pull me into and made my way over to sit next to her, leaning back against the slightly opened window. The cool breeze on the small of my back felt refreshing. _

"_What's up, Ally-gator?" I asked, pulling out our old childhood nickname for her. _

_She shifted slightly to look at me, something she had not done since I sat down. Her normally pretty and comforting face had twisted itself into a fearful but determined expression.;_

"_Doesn't this seem a bit odd to you? I mean, what? You've never even spoken to Jared before today. And suddenly he walks right up and asks you out?"_

"_Yeah..," I spoke slowly, trying to understand, "So..?"_

"_So something isn't right here. You've seen the type of girls Jared goes out with. You're not at all like them."_

_This was true. Jared had a history of dating two types of girls. Cheerleaders and sluts. Sometimes he got lucky and could find both qualities in one girl. _

_I stared at her in shock, feeling like I had been slapped. She was supposed to be my best friend! And she couldn't even fathom a guy like Jared, who was sweet and funny and good-looking and popular, would have any interest in me? _

_I didn't want to jump the gun and accuse her of something so when I found my voice I croaked out, "What, exactly, are you saying?"_

_By this time Tiffany and Sara had noticed that they were alone in the celebrating and had started to watch us with confused looks on their faces. Silent tension filled the room and replace the previous air of excitement._

"_Kim, he's _popular. _And you know how he and his group treat people. You know what they did to Chelsea Diamond in the fifth grade. Something isn't right here." _

_Ally was now staring at me with a pleading look on her face while I tried to make sense of her words. Who was I in this scenario? Chelsea Diamond? No. That couldn't be. Jared would never do something like that to me._

"_I'm not Chelsea Diamond, Ally. And this isn't the fifth grade anymore. They've grown up. " I tried to inject some confidence into my tone._

"_No, Kim, they haven't grown up! Not at all! We've grown up but _they _haven't!" Ally's shriek added to the tension level in the room._

_Ally was starting to look angry now. She stood up in front of me so she towered over me in my sitting position on the window seat. Suddenly the cool breeze offered by the window wasn't soothing any longer. Now, it was making me feel nauseous. I stood up so that Ally wasn't looming over me._

"_Why don't you just say what you're really getting at?" I said with false calm. Inside my heart was threatening to burst from my chest and do a tap-dance around the room._

_Ally opened her mouth to further try to cut me down. I'm sure. This time I didn't let her. I spoke right over the words she hadn't managed to force out yet._

"_You don't think a guy like him could ever be interested by someone like me. You don't think _anybody _could honestly want to go out with ugly, pathetic me. " I suddenly wanted to cry, knowing what one of my best friends was actually thinking about me._

"_No! What?! No! Kim, that's not it at all! I just-" I cut her off again before she could finish._

"_Well, I have news for you, Ally. Jared _does _want to go out with me. He _did _ask. And you know what else? I said Yes!" _

_Ally took a step back from me when I screamed the last part. Sara and Tiff were still sitting looking shell shocked. They must be shocked because usually by now they would've either taken sides or began to referee._

_I continued, mercilessly, "You're wrong! You just are!" I screamed desperately, " I know what this is! You're jealous! You just hate that someone like Jared could show any interest in someone like me and not you!"_

_This time she was the one who looked like _I _had slapped _her.

_After a moment she cleared her throat and spoke once again, "Well if that's how you feel I guess I'll just go then."_

_She turned away and slowly gathered her things before walking away from me , down the stairs and through the front door. This would be the last time I would speak to her for two weeks, until the night of the big dance. To this day it's still the longest we've ever gone with out speaking._

_You all probably know what happened from there. I got all dressed up and blew half a years allowance on a dress. Tiffany spent an hour on my hair and another thirty minutes on my make-up. I got to the dance at seven on the dot, not wanting to make him wait._

_And he never showed up._

_I waited for three whole hours before making my way home alone in the rain. I had forsaken the idea of a ride from my mom assuming Jared would want to drop me off. _

_I really was an idiot._

_That night I had laid in my bed crying like the pathetic mess I was. My sobs were getting louder and I was distantly thankful that my mother was working nights this week. I hadn't even bothered to take of my dress and although my mother is a little clueless watching her only daughter sobbing in an evening gown would have tipped her off that something was wrong._

_I would have called Tiffany or Sara but because they hadn't been invited to the dance they decided to pull an all nighter at the movie theater sneaking into all the R-rated films. I should have just gone with them._

_I should have known this was nothing but a big joke._

_I jumped when I heard my window creak open behind me. Just my luck. Get stood up and then killed by some crazed ax murdered. Figures. The least he could have done was get to me _before _I was stood up._

_When I turned around I didn't see an ax murderer (at least she has no history of ax killing that I'm aware of) but instead I saw Ally climbing into my room. I braced myself for her to say 'I told you so' or scream that I was an idiot and a horrible friend._

_Instead she just climbed into bed beside me and pulled me into a hug, "I'm sorry. He just doesn't see how wonderful you are."_

_The next day in school I was fully prepared to have Jared and his friends all laughing at and mocking me. Instead they looked right through me as always. It took me a while to realize they had forgotten all about there prank. What had seemed so monumental to me meant absolutely nothing to them._

_I meant absolutely nothing to them._

_**************************************************************************************************************************************_

From then on, i figured if i wasn't going to matter to them they wouldn't matter to me. So now I'm one of the select few who aren't afraid of them. I didn't worship them like everyone else and when i was forced to encounter them we exchange rude comments and went on with our lives. I was fine with it being this way. I don't know why he had to up and decide to change everything.

A/N- I'm sorry if this chapter gets a little corny at the end but I was up until three writing it and I've gotten very tired by now.

Review or I'll kill Jared! I mean it! I'll do it! (Although if the Jared I'm killing is the Jared in this story so far that wouldn't exactly be a tragic loss, would it?) None the less, Review anyway.


	5. Chapter 4: Some cause happiness wherever

Chapter 4: Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

"Maybe yellow would be nice." My mother picked up one of the color swatches littering our dining room table and held it up against the wall, "What do you think?"

How is holding a little two by three inch colored square against the wall supposed to help me imagine what the entire room would look like painted yellow? If anything it helps me imagine what the room would look like with a yellow stain on the wall.

"I think it would be like living in a giant banana." I answered, staring dubiously at the neon yellow paper she held to the wall.

Mom stepped back to examine the swatch more carefully, "It _is _a little banana-like in color, isn't it?"

She tossed the banana swatch onto the table and grabbed an orange one.

"No," I said, before she could even hold it up to the wall. I won't be living inside a traffic cone, thank you very much.

She mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like 'paint-Nazi' under her breath. I chose to ignore this because I'm an _incredibly _nice person.

"Maybe blue?" She held up a cheerful cape-code blue swatch.

"Blue sounds safe." I tried to imagine our large open floor plan living room/dining room/ kitchen area painted blue. "Maybe just an accent wall, though. Like on the big wall over by the stairs."

"You're probably right. That way we can paint it ourselves instead of hiring people. Surely we can manage one wall."

I immediately regretted my suggestion. The wall I had pointed out was one solid wall that ran up both stories of the house. There was no way we could do that ourselves. I opened my mouth to tell my mother that but she was already grabbing her keys and rambling on about paint brushes. Well, my mother will probably forget about the project before she even starts it. She's funny like that.

Anyway I didn't have time to try and talk my mother down from her latest home renovation kick. Ally had been honking the horn non-stop for the last ten minutes and if I waited any longer they'd leave with out me. They've done it before.

"Hey." I jumped in to Tiffany's shiny silver car and pulled the door shut behind me.

"Finally." Ally carefully reversed out of my driveway, avoided hitting Mr. Waverly's mail box and took off toward school.

If by 'took off' you meant drove to at a speed that was ten miles per hour less than the legal limit.

"Sorry," I strapped on my seatbelt after a stern order from Ally to do so, "My mom wants to paint the living room."

"You're mom always wants to paint something." Tiffany sipped coke through a neon pink crazy straw and chewed bubble gum at the same time. Ew.

"Or build something, " Sara added around a mouthful of soy protein bar. Double ew.

"Or tear down something," Tiff countered.

"Or remodel something."

"Yes, I know. You don't have to tell me, I live with her craziness daily." I stopped them.

It was true that my mother was big on home projects. Whenever she starts talking about home 'improvements' (I use the word 'improvement' reluctantly) that's when I know her 'muse' is failing her. My mother is an artist, using the word lightly. She hasn't finished a painting in over five years now. Instead her studio is filled with partially finished pieces. When she gets frustrated with whatever she's working on she starts to take out her excess energy on the house. I.E- home improvements. She usually gets half-way through them, gets bored and moves onto something else. After that it's up to me to finish them unless I want to live in a construction zone. As a result I now know how to cock a tube, put in and pull out tile, rewire a lamp, lay dry-wall and use wall paper.

If I fail to come up with a career before I graduate (which is always looking more and more like a possibility) I could always fall back on construction. I hear it pays alright and I definitely have the build for it.

I used to leave the cleaning up after my mother job to my father but five years ago he got a job as C.E.O of some big name computer software company and isn't usually home a lot. I could go days with out seeing him and have. He'll get in when I'm already asleep and take off before I wake up. Luckily, I get along better with my mother anyway. The whole absentee parent thing has made him completely out of the loop with me. Last year my birthday card from him read 'Happy Fourteenth!'. I was turning sixteen. Fortunately there was a big wad of cash in it to make up for the blunder.

When we pulled into the parking lot the fearsome foursome was leaning against Sean's shiny new truck. Amy had draped herself around Jared, much to the displeasure of her lap dog and boy toy. When we opened the door I heard her cooing something about going to the nurse. Come to think of it, Jared is looking a little bit like crap (setting aside the issue of whether or not he's Satan's spawn he usually looks pretty hot, I'm ashamed to say). His face had a pale and sickly look to it, like he was hung-over or something. But if he was hung-over Amy would know. Those four never go anywhere without at least one of the others especially not partying.

"I'm fine." Jared assured her while trying to stealthily work his way out of her death grip. No such luck. That bitch was on him like a fly on sticky paper.

"Are you sure?," Amy purred and rubbed her boob against his arm. Oh, gag me. "How about I bring by some of my famous chicken noodle soup by your place tonight?"

"Oh, so _that's _who started Campbell's. I was wondering." Tiffany murmured to us in an aside while shoving her feet back into her shoes. Tiff has a habit of kicking off her shoes in the car. Luckily she doesn't have smelly feet.

"I'll bet you five bucks she slips a roufie in it." I said while climbing out of the backseat.

I'm fairly certain Amy heard me but she ignored me this time in favor of playing nurse to Casanova over there. She now started to feel his temperature with the wrong side of her hand while leaning in super close. I swear to god she just blew in his ear. If she keeps this up I'm going to be the one who needs a nurse. Behind me, Sara started to make gagging noises.

It's always a toss up as to how the fearsome foursome is going to react to me. Half the time they ignore me and the other half they let the mocking commence. Unfortunately Jared seems to be distracting Amy's attention from me. How I'll miss our bonding time. I'm sure she'll make up for it in Spanish class.

"I'm sure that won't be necessary, but thanks." Either Jared heard me or was thinking somewhere along the same lines. Nobody would put it past Amy to poison somebody and I have a sneaking suspicion that he's well aware of the feud that Amy and Shandra have going over him.

Amy pouted but let up. "Well, in that case I'll see you guys at lunch." She grabbed her purse off the hood of the car, Amy doesn't bother with back packs she doesn't do anything in class but reapply make-up in class anyway. I don't think anybody really knows what she actually looks like under all that sludge, "Come one, now, Shandra."

Shandra pushed herself off the hood and sashayed after her friend. She purposely swung her non-existent behind from side to side as she walked away. I'm sure she was hoping that Jared was watching her walk away. If so she would have been disappointed. Jared was leaning back on the car and tipping his face towards the sun with his eyes closed.

I turned away from him so I wouldn't be tempted to stare. Even though I've known about the evil that lurks underneath the good looking surface (and boy was the surface ever good looking) for about three years now I still found myself gawking at him occasionally along with all the other girls at my school. I can't be blamed for these rare occasions, though. I'm a hormonal teenage girl and sometimes my hormones get the best of me.

Don't judge me.

Some guys over by the office started calling Tiffany's name, at this moment. "Duty calls, girls! See ya'll at lunch." Tiffany adjusted her top to expose more cleavage and made her way towards them.

"Okay, I got to go. Later." I turned and made my way over to the math and science building. This was our daily routine and we all knew it well by now.

"Good morning, Mrs. Curleck. " Mr. Maddox greeted as I walked in the door. As usual I was the first person here.

"Morning, Sir, " responded politely and took my seat.

I pulled out my math book and started to go over the chapter we covered last class. When you're as number challenged as me you have to do things like this just to keep up. The bell didn't ring for another seven minutes so I was surprised to hear the door open again. I was even more surprised when Jared walked through it. He's usually the one who saunters in five minutes after the bell rang, during the pledge. Mr. Maddox looked equally shocked but nonetheless greeted him as he greeted me. Jared just grunted at him and plopped himself into his seat. He looked slightly tight inside the space available in the standard school desks.

One of the reasons I had been so excited when he asked me out was because he wasn't any taller than me. When you're my size you can't just run around dating anyone. We're about the same height, Jared and I. I, however, didn't looked so smashed inside my seat. Same height or not he's still got about fifty pounds on me.

Jared leaned himself forward and laid his head down on his crossed arms. Usually he waited until fifth period to start napping. He's one of those infuriating morning people. His first period was reserved for socializing with his buddies and flirting with all the good looking, normal sized, girls in the class around him, even though he's already had sex with all of them At least that's the word around the ladies washroom.

Slowly students started to file into the classroom. Paul made his way over to the desk two chairs behind me and one row to the left. "Morning, Sasquatch." he said to me while he passed.

"Morning, giant walking bag of dog dung." I replied cheerfully. This was all just a part of our morning routine.

I know what you're thinking. I couldn't possibly have any more enemies at this school. Well, you'd be wrong. While Paul wasn't as prominent or active enemy as the fearsome foursome was he was still definitely an enemy. We more or less just lived in silent hatred for each other, him and I.

Long story short Paul got to third base with Tiffany at some seniors end of the year party and wouldn't talk to her the next day. Though, she'll readily deny it, Tiff had always had a little bit of a thing for Paul. He was also the same guy who had always thrown rude comments at Sara in the halls. Everyone knew what a sore point Sara's weight was for her and Paul, like Amy, didn't hesitate to use it against her.

Sara burst through the door while the bell was still ringing. She never used to be late but this year her locker is on the other side of the world and no matter how much she rushes she can never quite make it on time. Mr., Maddox knew this so he never gave her a hard time about it. Instead he just nodded politely at her rushed apology and started to shuffle through the papers on his desk.

Sara grinned at me while she made her way to the seat next to mine. Behind me Paul started to moo at her. I threw my pocket dictionary at him. I didn't turn around because it would look suspicious but I took his grunt to mean that it had hit it's intended target.

Math class passed by in a blur of numbers and confusing formulas that I knew would take hours of studying in my room tonight to comprehend. Mr. Maddox was droning on about pi when the room suddenly became silent. I looked up to see what the hassle was. I'll be the first to admit that one of the reasons I had trouble in this class was because I had a tendency to daydream. I was currently dreaming that Amy was really some sort of alien underneath all of that make up and she had just bitten off Shandra's head. Taking this into account you can understand my momentary confusion quickly followed by a fear the I had been called on for something.

Luckily, when I let my gaze rake the room, all while trying to look like I knew what was going on of course, nobody was looking at me. Instead all eyes were on Jared.

"I don't know," Jared had his eyes narrowed and was glaring straight at the teacher, a sure sign that he had already said this.

Mr. Maddox sighed in exasperation, "We've gone over this three times this class period alone, Mr. Ferdy."

"I don't know, " Jared repeated, starting to look angry.

"Why don't you come on up and give it a try anyway?"

"Because there's nothing to try. I said, I don't know the answer. That's not going to change by standing up there."

"Mr. Ferdy, I told you to try to answer the question. It's either that or you can go over to the principals office and try to explain to him why you were sleeping in my class instead of paying attention." Mr. Maddox held out the marker and waited.

The whole class jumped when Jared's desk suddenly upended itself with the force of him leaping out of it. We all stared at him dumbfounded, Mr. Maddox included, as Jared just stood there glaring at the teacher and started to shake. This went on for almost a full minute before he darted out of the room, leaving his things behind.

Well, I guess that means he chose the principals office then.

A/N (1)- I don't know anybody's last names so you'll have to excuse me if I got them wrong.

A/N (2)- Fresh baked cookies to all who review!!! If by fresh baked cookies you mean Oreo's I unwrapped and put on a plastic plate. Mmmmm, Oreo's.


	6. Chapter 5 This place is so weird that t

**Disclaimer- Any character you recognize is the fabulous work of S.M. I am merely a humble servant to both her and this plot bunny.**

**A/N- please excuse any flaws or typos. I was in a hurry when posting and didn't want to keep you all waiting any longer.**

**Chapter 5- This place is so weird that the cockroaches have moved next door**

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After Jared's little freak out in first period it was all the school could talk about. By lunch time the story was that Jared leaped over three desks and started to strangle Mr. Maddox until five other students had to pull them apart. I had just put down my tray when the girls started to bombard me with the requests for details. They all knew that I had the real story.

"So, what really happened?" Tiffany leaned forward on the table eagerly, so she wouldn't miss a word.

"It's not good form to engage in gossip, Tiffany." Ally shot Tiff a disapproving look as she sat down next to me.

Tiffany scoffed and waved an uncaring hand, "It's not gossip if it's the truth and Kimmy here had ring-side seats to the event."

You'll notice that she didn't bother to ask Sara for the scoop. Sara's no good when it comes to gossip. She always ends up going off on these random side tangents that have nothing to do with the story. Tiffany complains about this but she does the exact same thing.

"What really happened with what?" I asked innocently, before taking a sip of my milk.

It probably wouldn't get me off the hook but I decided to pretend not to know what she was talking about anyway. I, like Ally, hated gossip. It made me feel like some sort of ditsy cheerleader.

Tiffany leveled me with a glare, "Don't you play that game with me, missy. You know full well what I'm talking about. I want to know what went down with the Jared situation."

I sighed and put down the milk, "Fine," I relented. Tiffany was practically on top of the table she was leaning so close, "Mr. Maddox asks him a question and he says he doesn't know the answer. They go back and forth for a little bit and then suddenly Jared jumps out of his chair and just stares at Mr. Maddox and starts to shake. Then he just bolts from the room." I shrug to finish it off.

Tiffany stares at me blankly for a minute, "That's it?" She asks in a disbelieving tone. I nod and throw in another shrug just for good measure. "That blows. That's not good gossip at all. He didn't even take a swing at the teacher?"

I shake my head to indicate the negative and she slumps back in her seat looking disappointed.

"I told you it wasn't any big deal, " Sara says while snatching a carrot stick off Tiffany's tray.

"Yeah, I know, but I was hoping you were just being…you know…you."

"Well, I wasn't. People here are just starved for gossip and are blowing this way out of proportion. Especially considering Jared is involved. You know what a hot commodity he is."

Tiffany just sighs and starts to talk about her date with the new soccer captain. We all nod and pretend to be interested but we know she's only telling us this because Paul was within hearing distance, walking down the path behind our table. As previously mentioned she has a bit of a thing for him despite the fact that the only 'thing' any girl should have for Paul is a sharp knee to the groin.

Just as Tiff starts to talk about what great abs the soccer captain, Jeremy, has and how he asked her to see the new comedy movie this Saturday a can of opened soda crashes into the middle of our table, startling and spraying us all.

Tiffany and Sara shriek while Ally hurries to save her books from the mist. I look up just in time to see Paul high-fiving one of his buddies and laughing in our direction. I wave my middle finger in his face, before turning back to the commotion in front of me.

"This is never going to come out!" Tiffany whines while scrubbing at her white fuzzy sweater with a wad of napkins.

"Oh, my god! It ruined my book report!" Ally shouts while frantically searching her back pack for a second copy,

Sara and I just stood glaring at Paul's retreating form while he made his way down the aisle. Bastard.

"God, I hate him." Sara says vehemently while glaring daggers into Paul's overly-muscled back.

I stared at Sara in shock for a moment. She never says she hates anybody, not even Amy. But, then again, I guess that makes sense. Nobody was ever quite as rude to her as Paul always was.

"What an ass." Ally agrees, now holding a fresh copy of her report in her left hand. Leave it to Ally to carry two copies of the same report with her.

Ally, Sara and I all scowled daggers at Paul's form, hunched over a cafeteria table talking and laughing with his friends, having already completely forgotten about us. Tiffany sighs dreamily in his direction.

Man, that girl has it bad.

"I wish he would just disappear," Sara grumbles under her breath.

And he did.

****************************************************************************************************************

A week passed and Jared was old news. Two days after his outburst the school took to talking about Paul's mysterious disappearance from school, he had stopped showing up just after Jared did. This too became old news (for everybody except Tiffany, who would still steal hopeful glances to his empty seat in the cafeteria) until five days later when word started to travel around school that Jared and Paul had both been seen hanging around the reservation with Sam Uley and his crew.

Everybody knew about Sam Uley. Or should I say, we all knew the rumors. Nobody had ever managed to drag up anything concrete against him. All we knew was that he was suspicious. The gossip had ranged from him being a drug-dealer to the council grooming him to take over some position of power but nothing had ever been proven. Instead he just remained the fall back gossip, you know, the thing everyone talks about when there's nothing else going on.

"It just seems odd is all," Tiffany said one Thursday from her usual spot at our lunch table, "I mean, what? They never even talked before and now they're best friends?"

"What do you care? They're both assholes. I couldn't care less if they started to hang out with the devil himself." Sara said, while pushing her fork around the wilted lettuce on her plate.

"Paul isn't that bad!" Tiff defended, eliciting three distinct scoffs from the rest of us.

"Not that bad compared to who?" I asked, cheekily.

"Hitler?" Sara suggested.

Tiffany rolled her eyes at us but we continued anyway. What good are friends is you can't torture them every once in a while?

"I don't know about that. Hitler was, at least, an excellent public speaker, which of course that he had at least one redeeming quality. You can't say that about Paul." I replied while to trying to look contemplative.

"Too true, " Sara readily agreed, "How about Ted Bundy?"

Tiff interrupted before I could come up with a reason that Ted Bundy was better than Paul.

"Ok Ok! Paul is a bit of an ass. I'll agree to that. But he's still not as bad as that asshole, Jared."

"Well, nobody is as big an asshole as Jared." Ally put in, looking as furious as she always did whenever he came up.

"Agreed," I said, before quickly changing the subject to Janet Wieler who was going around telling everybody that she had slept with Paul (one rumor that was probably true) so we wouldn't have to talk about Jared anymore. I hated to talk about him, it always just ended up reminding me what an idiot I had been.

Ally opened her mouth to talk, probably to launch a futile attempt to get them to stop gossiping again, when the bell cut our conversation short.

"Well, I guess that's all then. I'll see you all by the car after school." Ally swung her backpack over her shoulder and gave us a parting wave over her shoulder on her way out the door. She is always entirely to cheerful to go to class.

I was about to ramble off my own goodbyes when Tiffany faced me with a wicked grin.

Uh-oh.

"You have science class next, right?"

"Maybe…" I said hesitantly, "What's it to you?"

"Oh, nothing. It's just….isn't that the class you have with lover boy?"

Sara starting laughing while I mumbled a quick 'oh, my god' and ran to class before those bitches could make my life any more miserable. Best friends are so not worth it.

Lover boy, in case you were wondering, is my lab partner. Eugene (The name alone is cringe-worthy. Nobody should have parents that cruel.) Syler had asked me out three times this year already. I've successfully dodged each attempt by laughing it off as a joke, making up previous plans and have feigned temporary deafness on more than one occasion, I'm ashamed to say.

While I, of course, find it flattering to be asked out, Eugene isn't exactly my dream date. Not that there's anything wrong with Eugene, mind you. But he is several inches shorter than me (But, then again who isn't?), teacher's pet, three-time science fair winner, and his back-pack regularly looks like it outweighs his own body by a considerable amount.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like smart guys as much as the next girl but every conversation I've had with poor Eugene has always ended up with him talking about global warming, chemicals in food, pollution, computer programs or something equally boring. Who knows, he'll probably end up becoming some super rich technology genius and I'll be kicking my own ass for not sweeping him up when I had the chance. But for now, I definitely don't want to date him.

Eugene straightened in his seat when I walked in and cleared my side of the lab table off for me.

"Hi, Kim!" His voice came out sounding high and squeaky like one of those Disney munchkins. He cleared his throat before he spoke again, this time in an unnaturally deep tone of voice like boys do when they want to sound older and manlier, "How's you're day been so far?"

I smiled politely at him while I dropped into my seat, on his left, "Fine, Eugene. Thanks for asking. How about you?"

"Good. Did you finish you're half of the report." He said before bending over sideways to dig in his backpack for his part of the assignment. When he comes back up, holding a thick looking stack of paper wrapped in a shinny project cover, his glasses are skewed at a crooked angle over his left eye.

"Of course," he watches me as I retrieve my own, considerably less thick, stack of paper and hand it over to him.

"Excellent!" he replies over-enthusiastically, still not noticing his crooked glasses. "You're the best lab partner, Kim. Last year I had to work with Shandra Adams. She never turned in anything."

"That's probably because she can't read or write." I commented before reaching over and straightening his glasses, an action that caused him to turn bright red and mumble a thanks.

"So, did you catch that special on the discovery channel last night? The one about polar bears?" Eugene asks after he had recovered form the whole me touching him thing.

"Didn't quite catch that one, surprisingly enough." I was busy watching reruns of Friends, like normal people.

"That's a shame! It was a great one," he says excitedly, like a small dog about to piddle on himself, "Their habitats are being threatened by the effects of global warming. The temperature is rising too high and melting all the ice where they live."

"That's a shame. I always liked polar bears." Well, what would you have said?

"Who doesn't?!" Eugene boomed, too loudly for the small classroom causing some people to look our way and laugh. He didn't notice of course, by now too wrapped up in the poor polar bears to notice the rest of the room.

Eugene had just started in on a healthy polar bears diet ( You know, in case I ever need to feed a polar bear) when Mrs. Turner started the lesson. Thank god. Not that I don't like Eugene. I do, actually, more than I like most people in this hell-hole. He's rather like a loveable puppy. But I had been up all night listening to my parents argue about my fathers long hours at the office and I wasn't nearly well-rested enough to make idle chit-chat with my over-bearing lab partner.

My parents spent most of their time arguing nowadays whenever my father was home, something that had a tendency to keep me awake at night. Neither of my parents seem to know the meaning of inside voices, unfortunately.

When Mrs. Turner released the period I said a quick good-bye to Eugene, one that he heartily returned, and left for history class. A class I usually shared with Jared. It was getting quite nice not having him around. Not that he actively annoys me, usually, but just being in his presence can cause anger to well up inside of me until I'm consumed with fantasies of popping his over sized arrogant head like an unsightly pimple. Now that he was gone I could actually pay attention to what the teacher is saying. My grade had already gone up fifteen percent.

But, of course, just as I was getting used to having him gone he came back again.

A/N-Get ready for some imprinting! It's gonna be a bumpy ride!

Now either review or go jump off a cliff!!! Preferably review. I don't care what they do in La Push, jumping off of cliffs is dangerous.

REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!


	7. Chapter 6 Be careful whose toes you ste

Disclaimer- Well, lets see, if I were SM I'd be rich. If I were rich I'd be shopping right now instead of writing fan fiction. So I guess that means I'm not SM. Darn.

Chapter 6- Be careful whose toes you step on today because they might be connected to the foot that kicks your ass tomorrow.

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"Well, it was nice going to an asshole-free school while it lasted." Tiffany said from her spot, spread out on the hood of her car in the school parking lot.

I snorted, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Only Jared was gone, and while he's certainly an asshole he's hardly the only one here."

"At least Paul's still absent," Sara said cheerfully, from where she was sitting half in half out of the passengers seat.

Tiffany made a little moue of regret that we all decided to ignore, because we're wonderful friends.

"You all rely entirely too much on gossip," Ally cut in while tearing open our usual Monday morning box of donuts, "Have any of you actually seen him yet? How do you even know he's back?"

Tiffany scoffed and held her hand out for a donut (the chocolate one's are her obsession), "Of course he's back. Stacy Miller, who works in the office, overheard Mrs. Reed on the phone with Jared's mother. She said that if he missed any more school he'd fail this term."

Sara nodded in agreement as she waved away the donut Ally was trying to hand her, "This is his senior year, he won't want to be failing that. Besides according to Stacy he didn't even turn in a doctors note, so he's not even sick. He'll definitely come back today."

I reached for a powdered donut, looking away from Tiffany in disgust when she tore the plastic lid off of the coke she got from the gas station, where we bought the donuts and coffee, and started to dip the rest of her chocolate donut in the soda.

It was true that so far we were operating on pure conjecture. This alone gave me hope that Jared might not show up to school after all. Besides, you know what they say. Hope springs eternal!

Especially for the stupid and incredibly desperate.

"Stacy Miller shouldn't be using her position as student aid for spreading around rumors. What goes on in the office is supposed to be private." Ally looked disapproving as she forced a plain donut into a reluctant Sara's hand.

Tiff laughed while she reached for a second donut, "Oh, please! This is _Jared_ we're talking about. Nothing in his life is private. He's like our own little Indian Brad Pitt."

"Besides," Sara added around a mouthful of dough, "_You_ can't really be concerned about _Jared's_ privacy."

'I couldn't care less about Jared. I just don't think that Stacy should abuse her power as student aid, that's all." Ally defended with out looking up from the history textbook that she had opened in her lap.

"Whatever," Tiffany hoped off the hood of the car and came to stand in front of us, "I'm off," she turned to me with her usual teasing smile, "And you, little missy, try not to kill Jared if he does come back. While I certainly wouldn't miss him, you're too pretty to go to jail. Toodles!"

We all murmured our goodbyes while we watched her walk away until Sara sighed and uncurled herself from the front seat, "Well, I better be going too if I want to make it back from my locker in time. I'll see you at lunch." It's true we have first period together but she more or less sits a mile and a half away so we don't really get to chat unless we have group work.

Ally and I sat together in silence for a minute before her voice reached my ears, "Are you going to be Ok?"

I slapped a look of pretend confusion onto my face and turned to look at her, "Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

Ally just rolled her eyes at what was probably horrible acting on my part, "Because Jared is coming back," She cut me off before I could protest, "Don't deny that you're worried about that. I know you. You weren't involved in that conversation at all and you're the loudest out of all of us, second only to Tiffany."

"I'll be fine. I've gone to school with him forever. So he's been gone for a while. That doesn't change anything."

Of course, Ally wasn't buying it. She never did.

"You know, if he hasn't remembered what he did to you in the last two and a half years he's probably not going to ever remember."

I sighed and laid back across the back seat with my legs dangling out of the car. Whereas Tiffany and Sara thought I was completely over the homecoming dance disaster, which I was for the most part, Ally knew that I was still terrified of them remembering.

It was a stupid fear, of course. For one, if they haven't recalled the incident yet they're probably not going to. Second, so what if they do remember? What can they possibly do about it? Make fun of me? They already do that.

But stupid fear or not it was still a fear of mine.

Ally stared at me, obviously waiting for me to come forward with some sort of heartfelt confession of insecurity or something. When that didn't happen she grabbed her back pack and got out of the car.

"I'm going to go and you need to as well, Ok? Just relax. Everything will be just fine. Nothing changes just because a guy misses two weeks from school." She reached over and patted my knee before turning and heading into the building calling over her shoulder, "I'll see you at lunch!"

She was right. Just because Jared had missed a little bit of school doesn't mean he's changed completely over night. Everything's going to go back to being exactly how it was.

Right?

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Jared Ferdy has gone crazy.

This is going to come as a devastating blow to all girls of La Push High, I just know it.

Now, I say this knowing full well that I myself can also have a tendency to be a few fries short of a happy meal every now and then. Who doesn't? We all have our days where we act a little bit off. It's to be expected out of life and doubly so after having to show up to this hell-hole day in and day out. That being said, there's a fine line between having-an-off-day-crazy and oh-my-god-hide-the-knives-crazy.

And, my kind friends, Jared Ferdy has just crossed that line.

No, scratch that.

He took a fucking long jump over the line and landed half a mile on the other side.

No, that's not even good enough.

He put on tap-shoes and river danced on the line until the poor defenseless line was pulverized to death under the crushing weight of his giant, hulking, muscley, form.

By now I'm sure you all are wondering what has driven me to make such strong accusations towards one of the most popular guy's we have here at La Push High. Believe you me I have my reasons. Allow me to clue you in.

The bell had already rang and Mr. Maddox had just asked us to open our textbooks to page two hundred and four. By now I had already dubbed the day to be blissfully Jared-free and my mood had taken a considerable turn for the better.

As usual I was wrong. *Sigh* That happens entirely too much for my taste.

I had just relaxed into my seat, my pretty little head swimming with relief, when the door slammed back into the wall with just a little bit too much force. Not forcefully enough to indicate anger, more the way someone who underestimates their own strength would open a door.

This made complete sense after seeing who was standing behind the door. If I had grown eight inches and gained what looked to be about eighty pounds of pure muscle more or less over night perhaps I'd underestimate my own strength for awhile too.

Every student looked up briefly with identical looks of mild disinterest on their faces to see who had interrupted class. At any other time I would have found the sight of twenty-two students all doing a simultaneous double-take to be hilarious. However, at this moment, I did the exact same thing so I can't exactly mock them for it.

Jared Ferdy walked into the room, seemingly oblivious to the class behind him staring holes into his back, and handed a light blue tardy slip to an equally dumbfounded Mr. Maddox before making his way to his seat off to my left side. All eyes followed him as he moved swiftly down the aisle and stuffed his overgrown frame into one of the tiny school-regulation desks. If he looked squashed in it before now he definitely did. A vision of a clown car came to mind.

Mr. Maddox was the first to recover, "Mr. Ferdy, welcome back. I trust you'll have no trouble making up any work you may have missed. Just see me after class for the assignments."

Jared just grunted at him and slunk down lower in his seat. I think he's just now noticed the classrooms intense focus on him. I was astonished to see him go slightly pink under his tan skin.

Who would have thought that Jared would be made to feel uncomfortable by a little staring?

You certainly can't blame the class from staring though. While it shames me to say this, somebody has to. Jared looked DELICIOUS! He had always been very good-looking, of course. This probably accounted for about ninety-five percent of his popularity if not all of it. But now, sheesh! The boy looked so damn delectable that I wanted to spread him on a ritz cracker and make him my lunch.

And I don't even like him! I imagine the feeling was even more magnified for those in the room who didn't actively loath him with everything in their being.

By this time everyone had gotten over the initial shock and were all whispering fervently to one another.

"Ok, Ok. That's enough. Back to work. You all have fifteen problems to complete by the end of class or you're going to have homework." The teacher tried to restore order to the classroom.

I tore my focus away from the Indian Adonis sitting not two feet from me and concentrated on problem number three. While I was working Mr. Maddox came down the aisle between Jared and I to catch Jared up on what we were doing that period.

"Just look and see if you can do problems one through fifteen on page two hundred and four, Ok? Let me just see if I can get you the notes," the teacher looked around the classroom of working students before his eyes fell on me, "Kim?"

I was too focused on my work to hear him at first so he had to call my name a couple more times to get my attention, "Kim? Kim?"

"Yes, sir?" I said when I finally caught on that he was calling me. I kept one eye on the problem I was working on, trying to remember how you find the square root of something. This always happens to me with math. I learn one new thing and forget two old ones.

"Could you loan Jared your notes so he can catch up? I'm afraid I didn't make any copies."

Now, ordinarily I would much rather drop dead than help out Jared in any way, shape of form but Mr. Maddox is one of those politically incorrect teachers who'll give better grades to the students he likes. Because of this I try my hardest to stay on his good side. If I can't pass this class out of knowledge then I intend to pass it out of bribery.

"Sure thing, Mr. Maddox," I carefully clicked open my three hole punch binder and selected the notes needed to complete this assignment. They weren't helping me anyway.

I look up for the first time during this exchange to hand the small stack of papers to Jared (coughsatanincarnatedcough) and made begrudging eye contact with him.

It was right around this time that somebody hit him in the head with a two by four.

Or at least that's what he looked like.

Mr. Maddox murmured a thanks and took the notes out of my hands and plopped them onto the unresponsive Jared's desk before leaving to go play minesweeper on his computer or something. Whatever it is teachers do when we're working.

Jared didn't watch him go or even say thank you for the notes (the giant self-entitled ass). Instead, apparently, he's decided the best course of action is to stare at me as if I've popped in a Marvin Gay C.D and started to do a strip tease on the desk.

I briefly contemplated asking him what the fuck was wrong with him or just throwing out some random insult to make him look away. But that probably would have gotten me on Mr. Maddox's shit list so instead I just shot him my best glare (Tiffany swears up and down that it can make the bravest of men shit themselves) and turned back to my assignment.

He'll look away eventually.

*5 Minutes Later*

The bastard is still staring!

How the hell can that be?!

He's sat here all fucking year long. Not once did he ever even spare me a glance (Why would he? He was too busy flirting with girls of average height to notice the freakishly tall girl next to him). What is it exactly that has suddenly made him gawk at me like I had just cured aids, cancer, heart disease and brought his grandmother back from the dead all in the same day?

So far I've considered my top being unbuttoned (it wasn't), my pants being ripped, (they were, but they came that way), something on my face (I checked my reflection in the glass of the window. Nothing there that wasn't supposed to be there) toilet paper on my shoe (they were completely toilet paper free), and that maybe he's suddenly fallen in love with me at first site (I dismissed that one for all the obvious reasons.)

All this brings me to where I am now. Sitting in my desk, staring blankly at my textbook, and declaring the end of Jared Ferdy's sanity.

I spare another glance towards him (the second one in the last two minutes, I'm sorry to say) only to find that he's still staring at me with the same old dumbfounded expression. I think a little droplet of drool just fell onto his desk.

Marvelous.

I shift around uncomfortably in my seat and glared unseeingly down at the numbers of my text book.

Maybe this is just a new game he's decided to play. Try and see if he can make Kim go crazy during math class. Well I got news for him, buddy. I've lived with my mother for the past seventeen years. My sanity has already been tested as much as you can humanly test anyone's sanity.

I shot him a glare to let him know that I was on to him. However, when I shot him the glare instead of being put off by it as I had intended for him to be he just grinned dopily at me.

Wonderful. I put my best glare out there and instead of being intimidated by it Jared merely looks like somebody had just announced that Christmas, his birthday and spring break have all come early this year.

"Ok, guys. The bells about to ring so you better pack up. Problems one through fifteen are due tomorrow."

Shit, now I have homework. I was too worried about Jared's little starathon to do any actual work. Maybe that was his plan all along.

The bell rang suddenly, jolting me out of my thoughts. I quickly gathered up my things and got up to leave. Jared can just go ahead and keep the notes for all I care, if getting them back means having to speak with him.

I made to follow the flow of students leaving the half empty classroom when a voice stopped me.

"Wait!" Jared croaked, his voice sounding strange and strained.

I ignored him. Besides he was probably talking to someone else anyway. I continued towards the door when a large, tendony overheated hand closed around my upper arm.

I whipped around to face Jared and was about to tell him to keep his big tendony hands to himself when he dropped his hand off of me like I had suddenly caught fire. I stood there waiting for him to say something but he just stood there frowning at my arm like he was worried he had hurt me or something.

Apparently he's going to need a little help, "What?" I snapped rudely.

I tried not to smirk to hard at the look of shock that crossed his face at my obvious hostile tone of voice and waited for him to speak.

When he just kept staring at me I tried again.

"What do you want?"

He didn't answer. Instead he just made this strangled garbling noise in the back of his throat. It sounded a little like somebody had tried to choke him while he was drinking water or something.

"Well, alright then. If that's all I'll just be going now"

I turned around and walked out of the classroom. I was already half way to my next class when I became aware that he was following me. I considered James Bonding my way through the rest of the hallway in an attempt to loose him but in the end decided to handle this now before it got any more out of hand.

I whipped angrily around to face him. He had been moving so fast that when I stopped he almost bowled right over me but caught himself right before he hit me. This ended with him standing less than two inches away from me. I took a step back, unnerved by the closeness, an action that caused him to look devastated for some unknown reason. Weirdo.

"Why the fuck are you following me?" I growled at him, drawing myself up to my full height and trying to look like the type of girl you don't want to mess with.

He stared at me for a minute while his throat worked like he was gearing himself up to talk, "But….but….you're just going to leave?"

Leave where? What the hell was he talking about? The bell had rang. I was going to my next class, which I was now late for thanks to him. The last of the students had already trickled into their various classrooms and we were the only two people standing in a disserted hallway.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"But we just met. You…you can't just…_leave_."

"Why can't I leave? And we didn't just meet either, you asshole! Not that I'd expect you to remember me." Maybe he was on drugs and thought I was somebody else.

He didn't appear to have heard me because he had taken up that whole staring and drooling thing he seemed so fond of again.

Shit, he must really be on drugs. From the looks of it, some wicked hallucinogenics.

I snapped my fingers in his face a few times to get his attention again. It was weird having to reach up to do this, I was used to looking down at people. This must be what petite people feel like.

He eyes seemed to refocus on me so I took my chances with talking again, "Why…Can't…I…Leave?" I spoke slowly and enunciated every word carefully, like you would to a small confused child, so that there'd be a better chance of his understanding me.

He seemed confused by the question and I was about to ask again when he answered, "Because…Well, because you're mine."

I stood staring at him blankly for a moment while I let his words process.

Once they did process I did what any self-respecting girl would do when a guy they barely know (and, really, if you have any balls at all, the ones you do know as well) tries to tell them they belong to him.

I kicked him in the groin.

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A/N- Well, there you go. Imprinting complete! Ah, young love. Don't you just love it?

I'm going to send everyone who reviews a puppy in the mail. Yes, you heard right. A puppy.

Or at the very least I'll e-mail all of you all pictures of puppies. Same thing, really.

Review, Review, Review!

CYBER PUPPIES FOR ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!


	8. Chapter 7 Cheer up, the worst is yet to

**Disclaimer- One second, let me go check…. No, I haven't turned into SM overnight. *Sigh***

**Chapter 7- Cheer up, the worst is yet to come****.**

**A/N- I know what you're thinking. Jared is a werewolf. He's not going to feel any pain if you hit him. Well, I think that were-wolf or not, that part on a guy is going to be pretty sensitive. **

**On with the story!**

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If you're going to wallop a guy right up in his man business there are really only two ways to proceed. You can either haul ass out of there before he recovers or you can stay and continue to attack (Verbally or physically. Entirely up to you.) him.

But, either way you don't just silently stand there and stare at him.

So, why exactly was I? Just standing there, I mean.

Because that's exactly what I was doing. I was standing in the middle of a deserted hallway watching Jared Ferdy, the most popular and best looking guy in the whole entire school (who may or may not be into serous drugs), while he writhed on the ground in pain, both of his hands clutched over his guy junk.

When did my life become so….overwhelming?

I noted, absently, that Jared was completely quite while he squirmed in pain on the ground in front of me. Every other guy I've ever kicked down there was cursing me out the entire time afterward.

I know what you're thinking. How many guys could I have possibly kneed in the groin to have this sort of experience?

The answer: quite a few.

Some people think this is fighting dirty. I disagree. Since men are technically stronger than woman I think that when us woman have to fight a man we should be able to use any weapon we my have in our arsenal be it scratching, biting and yes, knees to the groin.

It's only fair, really.

Any-who, after I knee a guy in his happy-sacks I can usually expect to hear some pretty colorful stuff. But not, apparently, from Jared. I think this is the only reason I didn't just walk away and go to my next class like I probably should have.

A small grunt escaped Jared as he began to recover and started to make his way to his knees.

What now? Should I apologize?

I certainly didn't want to do that. I mean, let's face it, he had that one coming.

Should I attack him again?

At this point it just seemed cruel. Tempting but cruel.

Should I make a run for it?

Doing it now just seemed ludicrous. If I was going to run I should have done it a lot earlier.

Jared paused to catch his breath when he was on his knees before pushing himself back into a standing position. His hand twitched like he wanted to rub himself but couldn't do so because I was standing here. Good.

When he was standing we just sort of looked at each other, each of us at a loss as for what happens next. This isn't a situation I encountered often and I'm willing to bet the same is true for him. Usually I would have run away (or started to beat the crap out of the guy depending on the situation) by now and no girl had probably ever kicked him in the love sacks before.

"Are you going to attack me again?" He asked, making him the first to break the silence.

"No," I answered, then thought about it, "Maybe. It depends on what you say next, really."

His lips twitched like he wanted to laugh but thought it would piss me off. It would have.

"Sorry."

His apology shocked me. I wonder if the great Jared Ferdy had ever had to apologize to anybody before. I'm guessing, not.

Silence met his apology and I was suddenly filled with the intense desire to run for it. Great. Where was that desire three minutes ago? But being around him, it was just too much. It was too much and I didn't even know why.

Oh, wait. Yes, I did. I knew exactly why it was too much. Because the asshole had stood me up in my freshman year, made me believed he liked me before making an ass out of me and, not to mention, less than five minutes ago he tried to tell me that I belonged to him.

This realization rallied my anger.

"You bastard!" I stepped forward and shoved a finger at his chest.

Ow. Ok, hard chest. Not doing that again.

Jared looked shocked by my sudden change in mood. That's understandable, I guess, when not two minutes ago I was standing passively enough, in front of him.

"I thought you weren't attacking me again?"

"Well, I changed my mind!" I curled my fist at my side so I wouldn't hurt my hand trying to shove him again, like I so badly wanted to. Usually I'm very much opposed to violence but the situation seemed to call for it.

"Why?" Jared asked, looking genuinely confused, I guess he really didn't remember me. Now why did that bug me so much? "All I said was sorry."

I chose to ignore that, "Just who do you think you are? Huh?" He opened his mouth to speak again but I kept going before he could, "Look, I don't know what game you're playing at but I can assure you it's not going to work this time!"

Jared held his hands up in the universal sign for I surrender before running one of them through his hair, "I'm not playing any game, Ok? I just want to get to know you."

Despite his placating gesture he just added more fuel to my already pretty fuelly fire, "Oh, you want to get to know me? And why is that?"

"Well, I just know you're an amazing person and since you're new and all you'll be needing to meet everyone anyway…" He was about to continue until he caught a glimpse of my expression and he dried up. His next words came out as a slightly scared sounding croak, "What?"

The bastard.

"New?!" Jared recoiled from my shriek, obviously not expecting it. Idiot. "You think I'm new?!"

He looked hesitant to answer, "Well, yeah. I've never seen you around, and I definitely would have noticed you if I had. So, you must be new…" he trailed off, looking at what, I'm sure, was a very insane and not at all pleasant look on my face, "Why? Aren't you? New, I mean?"

I took three steadying breaths before answering like they told us to do in the meditation class Sara dragged me to last year. When I spoke again my voice sounder calmer, less deranged. It was also devoid of any emotion whatsoever but at least it was clam. I'm willing to take what I can get.

"No. I'm not new."

Jared got the most peculiar look on his face at my words and I wondered if he thought I was going to kick him in the nuts again.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't considering it.

Before I could see if I would give in to temptation and attack him for the second time, effectively ending any shot he might have had of every being called 'daddy', in the last ten minutes a loud voice boomed through the hallway.

"Excuse me!" Mrs. Paen, one of the three hall monitor we have here at La' Push High, "What are you two doing out of class? The bell rang fifteen minutes ago. There is no time for hallway rendezvous between lovebirds."

I opened my mouth to vehemently deny any sort of romantic connection to Jared but Mrs. Paen just kept talking over me, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to write the two of you up for a detention."

I thought about arguing that it wasn't my fault that Jared pickled such an inopportune time to start stalking me but decided against it. Who's going to believe _he_ would stalk _me_? I mean I'm not exactly puke ugly or anything but as far as physical appearance goes Jared's most definitely got me beat.

Probably one of the things he won when he bartered his soul to Satan.

I stared resolutely at Mrs. Paen while she filled out the necessary forms and lectured us on punctuality (Which, yes, was as interesting as it sounds). Unfortunately it wasn't enough to distract me from the fact that Jared was staring at me again, this time with the most tragic expression on his face. Like a small child who had just dropped their ice cream cone or something.

Luckily, she finished mine first so I just ripped it out of her hand and stormed down the deserted hallway, without so much as a glare towards Jared, mumbling to myself about what an ass he was.

Sadly, that wasn't enough to distract me from the fact that I now have a detention with said asshole.

It sucks to be me.

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"Are…are you ok, Kim?"

I turned towards Eugene's concerned and slightly frightened looking face and offered a tightlipped smile that I hoped was reassuring. It probably just came out looking manic but it was the best I could do at the moment. I was still fuming from my earlier confrontation with Jared and the consequential detention that followed.

"I'm just fine, Eugene." I assured him.

I probably wasn't very convincing, I wasn't that great of an actress even in the best of times, but he seemed to accept it. Eugene just nodded at me and turned back to the lecture being presented in the front of the classroom.

Class passed slowly while I composed a very long list of Jared's worst quality, in alphabetical order. Arrogant, Bad grades, Cruel, Dimwitted, Etc.

When the bell rang I was still on 'R'. I gathered up my stuff and turned to say goodbye to Eugene only to find him looking down at his binder, red in the face. Uh-oh. I know what that means.

"Kim?" He asked hesitantly.

"Yeah, Eugene?"

What was a good excuse? Washing my hair? No, that just sounds like a thinly veiled diss. Grandmother's Birthday? No, everyone knew all my grandparents were dead. I have a boyfriend? No, this is La' Push. If I had a boyfriend everyone would know by now.

"Well, I was just wondering, and it's ok if you don't want to, if you wanted to go to the Culture Festival in Port Angeles? With me, I mean." I opened my mouth to spurt out an excuse but he kept talking before I could even think of one, "It's totally ok if you don't want to go. I mean, I'd understand. I just thought….that you might want to." Eugene trialed off lamely and stared down at his sneaker clad feet his face reaching new levels of red.

I grabbed desperately at the first excuse that popped into my mind.

"I'm really sorry Eugene. My parents wouldn't let me go out of town with a boy." I tried to insert as much remorse as I could into my tone.

This was, of course, a complete and total lie. Anybody who knew me well would know this. My father wouldn't notice if I skipped off to Vegas and married a pimp and my easy going hippy mother would just be too thrilled at the prospect of my new thriving love life to care if he took me to Canada to buy under priced beer.

I watched guiltily as Eugene's bony little shoulders hunched forward in disappointment.

"Oh. Well,..that's ok, Kim. I have to go. I'll see you tomorrow." With that rushed goodbye he grabbed his semi-truck sized backpack and hightailed it out of the classroom.

I shouted one last 'sorry' towards him but I don't think he heard me. Although I knew that he'd be fine by the next time I saw him, he always was; having been perked up by the latest discovery channel special or something, I still felt bad. I really liked Eugene and chances are we could be great friends if he could get over this little crush he had on me.

I sighed and grabbed my own bag to leave the room for a very welcome end of the day. Luckily my detention wasn't scheduled until tomorrow. Thank god for small favors.

When I got outside the classroom I considered turning right back around and hiding in the science room till the school cleared.

I'm sure you're probably wondering what could make a previously eager to leave student eager to hide. Well that answer could be found in one word.

Jared.

You know, sometimes I think someone up there is out to get me.

I just bet it's my grandma Helen. The bitch never liked me.

Jared was leaning against the row of lockers outside my classroom and appeared like he was waiting for someone. Two guesses who that someone was and half the guesses don't count.

Shit.

Well, it was now entirely too late to turn back and hide. Because I had hesitated Jared had spotted me. The biggest grin I've ever seen on anyone suddenly spread out across his face. It looked like somebody had just told him he could move into the playboy mansion or something.

He pushed himself off of the lockers (And I do mean _lockers_. The broad expanse of his back could easily cover almost four of the skinny metal doors.) and started to weave through the crowd of students all pushing themselves eagerly towards the nearest exits to start their after school activities.

He didn't get very far.

"Oh, Jared honey!"

I didn't think I'd ever feel so relieved to hear Amy Fink's high nasally voice. Hell, I never thought I'd be anything but completely disgusted and annoyed to hear Amy Fink's voice.

Just as I was prepared to make a mad dash for the door and was cursing myself for wearing flats instead of sneakers, Amy appeared out of the ladies room not two feet from Jared.

Jared didn't appear to have heard Amy, his soul focus still seemed to rest on yours truly. Luckily for me, Amy isn't one to be ignored. She pushed our fellow classmates out of her way as she slunk over towards Jared and grabbed hold of his poor unsuspecting arm.

Jared stopped and looked down at Amy with a slightly confused expression clouding his handsome face. Amy just grinned seductively at him and pulled herself towards him so her small slender body was more or less hugging Jared's huge left bicep. The two of them looked rather ridiculous together. Because of Jared's extremely large size the petite Amy looked like a small child hanging off of his beefy arm.

"Where have you been?" Amy whined, completely oblivious to me standing three feet from them, "You didn't call me."

Jared just frowned down at her and he kept flicking me glances out of the corner of his eye.

Well, this was new.

If I didn't know any better I'd say Jared was finding Amy to be annoying. While this is something I and the rest of the school have known to be true of her for a long time Jared never seemed to agree.

Although he had never exactly returned her attentions he always just seemed slightly amused by them. Like any sane guy would, I always thought that he was thrilled that Amy and Shandra fought for his attention. That's certainly an ego bust if anything is.

Not that Mr. Arrogant here needs his ego to be any more boosted.

I didn't stick around to see what Jared would say to Amy, although I secretly hoped it would involve a multitude of curse words. This was my chance and I intend to take it. I darted towards the double doors leading out towards the parking lot and pushed through them before he could try to stop me.

Although I didn't look back I could feel his eyes on my back the entire way towards the car.

Asshole.

The girls are never going to believe this.

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A/N- I want to send my most sincere thank you's to my reviews. I've never gotten so many reviews on one chapter before. You all are going to spoil me, be forewarned.

Now continue to spoil away! Review Review Review!!!!!!


	9. Chapter 8 You can't make someone love y

Disclaimer- Alright, you caught me. I am SM and I just choose to waste my time writing fan fiction instead of working on my next multi-million dollar book. Happy now?

Chapter 8- You can't make someone love you. All you can do is stalk them & hope they panic & give in

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"Well, I gotta say; drugs are certainly looking like distinct possibility." Tiffany said, from her place at the foot of Ally's bed.

"Definitely." Sara agreed while she sat at the desk and picked at the remains of a turkey sandwich.

I had spent the last thirty minutes filling them in on every detail I could recall from what I was now referring to as 'The Jared Incident'. They all agreed that something was definitely up.

Well, they all agreed that after they stopped laughing at the part where I kicked Jared in the gonads.

Bitches. (How dare they laugh at my misery?)

"It was like….," I struggled to find the right words to define Jared's behavior while I stared up at the ceiling from where I was laying on the floor, my feet elevated above me and propped up on the edge of the bed, "he was in a trance or something. Just completely, I don't know, hypnotized."

"Drugs." Tiffany concluded while reaching in her bag for a magazine.

"Well, he has to be on steroids to have grown so much in less than two weeks." Sara pointed out.

"Maybe that's why he's acting so weird. Steroids are a drug." Tiffany supplied while reading '50 Ways to Please Your Man Using Only Your Tongue' in Cosmo.

"You know those are supposed to make a guy's You-Know-What shrink." Sara said.

This dragged Tiffany's eye's away from her magazine, "Really?"

Sara nodded, "Oh, yeah. Apparently it starts to get super tiny because it messes with their testosterone levels."

Tiff wrinkled her nose in disgust, "Ew! Why would anybody take them, then? Isn't that…area usually super important to guys?"

I sighed and swung my feet off the bed to sit up, "As lovely as the image of Jared's penis shriveling up is, and I can assure you that after today's events it is a lovely image, steroids normally don't affect you're mental state that drastically. Certainly not that quickly, either."

Sara said, "Well, it's definitely some type of drug. I can't see any other explanation."

"Hey, maybe he was gone so long because he was in rehab!" Tiffany squealed, her eyes alight with this potential new gossip.

"No," I said, flicking a stray sock at Tiff, "If he was in rehab he would be over it and wouldn't be tripping out in math class."

Tiffany deflated at having this precious piece of gossip ripped away from her and turned back to her magazine. Sara started to write her sandwich down into her 'food journal', a collection of everything she's eaten through out the day and an on going calorie count. The girl is obsessed.

You might have noticed by now that one member of our foursome was absent from this fascinating dissection of the inner workings of Jared's mind. Ally was sitting against the wall below the window, ignoring the open chemistry text book in her lap and watching me. She had been strangely quite since I told them about today's happenings.

Sometimes, I think that the whole thing with Jared in freshman year effected her more than me. Afterwards, she had forgiven me right away but it took a while to completely rebuild our relationship.

I had, after all, committed the cardinal sin. I had put a guy (a guy I barely knew, to boot) before my best friend of fifteen years. The only thing worse then that is sleeping with a friends boyfriend, or something. Since none of us had boyfriends that was pretty much the worse I could do.

So, while Tiffany and Sara took this with a large amount of surprise, a fair amount of confusion and very little concern I knew the opposite would be true of Ally.

But it doesn't matter. By tomorrow Jared's high will have worn off and everything will go back to normal.

Besides, even if it doesn't, I'm not one to be fooled twice.

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"Hey, Kim."

I turned around and started to walk the other way.

"Wait!" Jared yelled, "Don't…don't you need something from your locker?"

Damn him. I did need my stuff out of my locker. My locker, that a nervous looking Jared Ferdy was pacing in front of when I stumbled sleepy eyed through the double doors to the school, one hand holding my half drank coffee and the other fumbling for the books I was going to store in said locker until lunch.

I paused in the middle of the hall and wondered how much I needed my algebra book. Of course, I already knew the answer. Math was the one class that always used the book, every damn period.

Fuck.

I braced myself (Much like a soldier preparing for an intense battle against an enemy that far outnumbers him) and turned back in my original direction to make my way over to my locker. I kept my eyes firmly on the chipped yellow paint of the slim metal door instead of the hopeful looking boy next to it.

"Morning, Kim." Jared says, again with that impossibly hopeful tone. What he's hoping for I don't know. Maybe the drugs are making him think I'm Ed McMahon.

I spun the numbers into my lock and ignored him.

Unfortunately, it seems he couldn't be swayed, "How'd you sleep?"

I grabbed my locker door and pulled it open with a bit to much force causing the hinges to whine quietly in protest. Oops. I probably shouldn't pull a hulk in front of Jared. Although, maybe if I did he'd leave me alone.

Hmmm, something to consider.

"How do you know my name?," I snapped a after a moment of tense (But still hopeful, of course!) silence.

"You told it to Mrs. Paen yesterday, when she was writing the detention passes." Jared brightened considerably, apparently thinking I was talking to him now or something.

"Uh-huh," I said slowly while carefully positioning that damn hope of his under the heel of my boot and preparing to grind it to a messy bloody hopeful pulp.

Jared didn't seem detoured by small answers unfortunately, "Yeah, Mrs. Paen is the worst, don't you think." he paused for a moment before rushing on, sounding panicked, "I mean…I mean unless you like her, of course. Then I do to. She's really not that bad. On second thought she's great. The best teacher here, in fact. So..yeah."

Look, now he's searching for common ground. How cute.

"I wouldn't really know how I feel about Mrs. Paen, just yet. I mean, I am new here after all." I said flatly, flipping through the pages of my history book and looking for my homework that I wedged there.

Jared suddenly looked like I had just told him he had killed Santa and a whole group of abused orphans weren't going to have a Christmas this year, just because of him.

"Look, Kim. I'm really sorry about that, " I was about to cut him off, probably with a well-timed scoff, but he kept talking at such a rapid pace that I could hardly make the words out, "Like so so sorry. You can't even imagine how sorry I am. Like the sorriest I've ever been times twenty. But I'll make it up to you, I swear I will. I can carry your books for you, or buy you lunch, or do your chores, or walk your dog or do your homework. Yeah! I'll do your homework. I'm not very good at math but I'll study up on it some more. I guarantee you'll get an 'A'!"

I cut him off while he stopped for air, "Whoa! Down boy. I can do my own homework and my own everything else for that matter. In fact, I don't need you at all so feel free to leave me alone now."

With that I slammed my locker door shut and quickly sidestepped into the crowd of student so he couldn't try to walk with me to my next class.

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"Fuck." I glanced at my emotionally distraught friend, well tried to anyway. She was hiding in a tent of her own hair at the moment.

"Ok, just calm down." Ally supplied, one hand rubbing comforting circles on Sara's back, who currently had her head between her knees.

"I don't know why you're so freaked out by this. You knew he was coming back eventually." Tiffany huffed from her position next to me on one of the many cafeteria benches.

Needless to say, Tiffany wasn't exactly as comforting and understanding as the rest of us were in this particular situation. The fact that Paul was coming back to school tomorrow thrilled her to no end.

Which, of course, pissed Sara off to no end.

Tiffany and Sara were like the perfect pair of friends. One could tell what the other was thinking all the time. If Sara was happy then Tiffany was happy. If Tiffany was depressed then Sara was depressed. They had this amazing connection that never failed. Personally I was a lot more like this with Ally.

When Tiffany had come back to school the day after the party where she had hooked up with Paul only to find he wouldn't give her the time of day Sara had listened to her cry for days on end all the while being completely sympathetic even though she hated Paul and was pissed Tiff would lay a finger on him.

Despite all of this, the two had always clashed where Paul was concerned.

Clashed was really a mild word.

They went at it with a passion most usually reserved for major jihads.

"This is gong to suck." Sara declared, finally removing her head from the vice of her knees.

That's the spirit!

"No more than usual." I comforted…well, tried to comfort. Judging from the look Ally gave me I failed.

I've been told I come across as rather cold and unsympathetic in a lot of situations. I figured Ally had that whole touchy feely front covered. That was why we worked so well together.

Sara sighed and played with her carrot sticks for a minute, "I know, I guess I just got too comfortable not having him around."

"There's only half a year left with the bastard before he graduate, assuming of course he's smart enough. I, personally, am astounded they let him leave kindergarten." I supplied.

"Yeah, but half a year with Paul feels like a century stuck in traffic." Sara whined.

I had always felt bad for Sara. The whole Me and Jared thing was kind of like getting punched in the face. Sure, it hurts. But it's quick and it's over in a minute. Whereas the whole Paul and Sara thing was kind of like getting your arm pinched again and again and again in the exact same spot until you want to rip your entire limb off and beat the person pinching you with it until they stop twitching.

Paul worked his magic on Sara with a subtle wearing away of her confidence slowly over the course of about six years. It's not so much that it's huge, it's that it's constant. Every time she walked by him he'd just have to call her a name and once he even threw a rock at her and gave her a bruise on the back of her neck.

That, of course, never happened again because afterward I slapped him so many times it sounded like applause.

I'm fairly certain that it was the combined efforts of Paul and Sara's mother that made Sara the borderline anorexic she is today.

"Yeah, he's pretty much a complete ass." Ally agreed while forcing half of her sandwich onto Sara's plate.

This, it appears, was all Tiffany could take. I had been waiting for her to speak up.

We were, after all, dissing her man.

"Give it a rest, already! Jeez!" Tiff exclaimed in exasperation, slamming her coke can down on the table. "It's Paul, for god's sake. Not Mussolini!"

"Close enough." Sara snorted around a bite of Ally's sandwich.

"Paul is not that bad." Tiffany defended.

"Like hell he isn't." Sara huffed.

"Really, what has he ever done to you? So he makes a couple of Jack-ass comments every now and then. What teenage guy doesn't!'

"Well, that's easy for you to say! What does Paul do to you? Ignore you? Big deal! I would _love_ it if Paul would just ignore me!"

Tiffany turned red, "You're too sensitive! I'm sure he only means the comments jokingly."

"Jokingly! That's funny! Last I checked, Satan doesn't joke, so I don't see why his son should either."

"You don't know what you're talking about! Just the other day I saw Paul helping an old woman with her groceries!" Tiffany shrieked.

It was a good thing the cafeteria was already so loud, if it wasn't we'd be stirring up quite a scene.

"Helping her! Hah! He was probably mugging her!" Sara shot back.

"Enough!" Ally, ever the peace maker for our little foursome, cut in, "We are all separate individuals and we can have different opinions on different people."

"Yes, I think that is enough," Tiff said while she collected her things, "I have to go."

Ally and I said our goodbyes (Ally without looking up from her textbook which she had turned her attention back to after the fight. I swear she studies as much as Eugene.) and Sara ignored her in favor of picking the meat out of her sandwich. They'd be ok again by the time we meet at the car after school.

This is just how we show our love in our sick and twisted little group.

"So," Sara tactfully changed the subject, "What's with you and Jared?"

It was around this time that I adopted my I-haven't-a-clue-what-any-of-you-are-speaking-of face. It never really works but I keep trying it anyway. No idea why.

"What do you mean?" I busied myself with cleaning up my lunch area and prayed that this would be the one time she'd just let it go.

I didn't feel like talking about Jared, especially in front of Ally. It usually put her in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

"Oh, don't give me that innocent act." Sara scoffed, ignoring my skillfully delivered back-off-or-I-will-hang-you-with-a-rope-of-your-own-intestines glare, "He's been staring over at you all lunch period. He even sat at a different table just so he could have a better view. Look at him! He looks like he just shot his oldest friend, for gods sake. Something is obviously up"

It was true that Jared had removed himself from his usual spot in front of the cafeteria doors, where all the popular crowd usually sat, (all the better to be seen, the little attention whores) and was now eating by the dumpster.

This spot just happened to have the best view of me in the whole room. And it just happens that he kicked three freshmen from this particular spot (not that he had to work much. He was, after all, still a god around here. Freshmen regularly throw themselves at his feet as sacrifices.) so he could sit there. And it just happens that I saw him standing by the back wall waiting for me to pick my seat before he picked his.

Despite all of this, I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that he picked that particular spot.

Well, that's what I'm going to tell myself, anyway.

If I were being honest I'd say I just cannot handle having the most popular guy in all of La Push turn stalker crazy on me. It just can't happen.

Not only do I now have to wait until the last minute to show up to Algebra (a class he's suddenly almost obscenely early for now days) so he won't have time to talk to me, effectively missing out on my preparation time. I also have to check around corners to see if he's there and if he is I have to navigate the quickest escape route. I've had to pretend I haven't heard him calling out to me in the hallway between periods three time's now.

As if all of this didn't suck enough on it's own the universe somehow pulled all of it's resources together to make my existence even more miserable.

Amy Fink knows.

I thought she was bad before. How naïve my little inexperienced brain was. We were practically the best of friends before when you compare that to the hell I'm currently living in now.

The sudden attention Jared was lavishing on me did not go unnoticed by our small school population. As suspected, this didn't please Amy. In fact she's been taunting me every chance she got. I don't how she can even think of things to say anymore. So far she's insulted my height, my clothing, my friends, my family, my lack of a love life and pretty much whatever else she can sink her perfectly manicured talons into.

Of course, she's done none of this stuff in front of Jared. Instead, when he's around, Amy just has to settle for hanging all over him (something he seems less than pleased with as of late) and glaring in my general direction.

I got to admit though, as much as this whole Jared thing annoys me I have been known to enjoy anything that can make Amy Fink miserable. So that's one good thing that has come out of this at least.

Amy, who had immediately moved her spot when Jared moved his, leaned into him and said something very close to his ear while rubbing her c-cup tits on his arm. Jared reluctantly tore his eyes away from their new favorite pastime (tracking my every god damn move) to look at her.

I figured this was as good an opportunity as I was ever going to get.

"I got to go, I'll see you all later." I whispered, as if Jared had bionic ears or something, and grabbed my stuff and bolted form the cafeteria.

Because I was certain that Jared would notice my absence and come looking for me, I ducked into the ladies room to wait out the last few moments of lunch.

All of this avoidance, however, would end up meaning nothing. I still had detention with the bastard in less than three hours.

That's right. Just Me, Jared and whatever unfortunate soul they send to chaperone us.

Yay.

A/N- I'm sorry if it seems like a long time since I've last updated, although it's only been a week. School just started so the updates will probably slow down a little bit but I will keep them coming as quickly as I can.

Reviews help encourage me to forsake my homework for the pleasure of fanfic writing.

Review Review Review!


	10. Chapter 9 I'm not a tease, I’m just a r

Disclaimer- Nope, still not her.

Chapter 9- I'm not a tease, I'm just a reminder of what you can't have

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I've had my fair share of detentions over the years.

Yes, I know you're shocked.

As you may or may not have noticed, I have a slight tendency to get into a few confrontations with my fellow classmates.

None of which are my fault, of course, but I generally have a hard time convincing the administrative staff of La push High of that.

It's for this reason that the whole detention thing isn't new to me. Because I've grown so accustomed to the routine detention isn't really any sort of a big deal anymore. I mean you go in, pick a chair, get started on your homework and wait till the teacher chaperoning releases you.

It's not exactly torture.

Detention is actually kind of nice, really. I mean, sure, I'd rather be at home. But by the time I leave I already have all my homework done and it's usually fairly quite and peaceful in the room.

Now while I don't despise detention by any means, I certainly never looked _that_ glad to be here. Definitely not as glad as him, anyway.

I can't say for certain that he was going to get in trouble for grinning like that but it has to at least be frowned upon.

I mean, come on. This is supposed to be a punishment. They're not going to be happy if you look like you're enjoying it.

Anywho, I walked hesitantly through the door for what I suspected was about to be the longest hour of my life (doesn't take any physic powers to see that one coming).

I walked into the room they were using for detention this week, to find Jared sitting rail straight in his seat and anxiously watching the door as if he expected a long line of his dead relatives to come marching threw it at any moment.

When he saw me, his whole face lit up like cheap string off Christmas lights.

So, I guess, that it wasn't the relatives he was waiting for. It was me.

Goody.

"Hey, Kim!" Jared waved at me excitedly, as if I could somehow miss his six foot seven two hundred and fifty pound form sitting in the seat closest to the door.

I ignored him and made my way to the other side of the room, carefully picking out the seat farthest away from the overanxious popular boy I would be sharing the room with.

I tried not to watch for Jared's reaction but I saw anyway.

Hey, give me a break. It was just the two of us in the room, so far. What else was I supposed to look at.

Jared frowned for a moment before grabbing his stuff and pushing his chair back with a screech.

Oh, please don't let him be doing what I think he's doing. Please, please, please….

Damn it.

Jared walked quickly across the empty classroom and pulled out the chair on the desk closest to me.

The bastard.

Unfortunately, before I could get up and move as far away from him as the space would allow Mr. Maddox strolled in with a stack of papers wedged under his elbow and in order to avoid looking like we were playing some sort of retarded game of musical chairs I was forced to stay where I was.

"Ok," Mr. Maddox claimed the empty teachers desk at the front of the room, spilling all of his things out onto it, before turning back to us, " You're supposed to be using this time to think about whatever it is you did that got you landed in here for the next hour. Personally, I don't see any reason why you can't do this while reading or doing homework. So just find something to keep you busy and keep quite till this is all over."

I nodded at Mr. Maddox, mostly because I felt he deserved some sort of recognition for showing up (regardless of whether or not you're getting paid to be here, it still sucks. And since there's no computer he can't even play minesweeper. Poor man.) and he certainly wasn't going to get it from Jared seeing as he didn't even take a break in staring at me to acknowledge Mr. Maddox.

I pulled out my chemistry book and opened up to the page dealing with the conversions, Mr. Maddox pulled out a big official looking red pen and began to grade papers, and… Jared continued to gape at me like we were in a strip club and I had just taken my top off to start the pole dance.

Yep, defiantly going to be one of the longest hours of my existence. But hopefully if I just focus on my work he'll get tired of staring and fall asleep or something.

I'm sure I'm just being overly dramatic. We'll probably be out of here before I know it.

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It was around five hours later that I realized that for some reason the clock was insisting on lying to me and telling me that only ten minutes had passed.

Stupid cheap school clock.

It was also around this time that a piece of folded up paper found it's way onto my desk.

I debated briefly with the notation that perhaps the school ceiling was raining paper, the option that I most hoped was true, before forcing myself to come back to reality.

And in reality a certain annoying, overly muscled young man was the one that put it there.

Well, now what? Should I ignore it? Throw it away?

But even as my mind quickly ran through all these options I already knew what I would do. Regardless of whether or not I wanted to have any sort of communication going on with Jared (and I can assure you, I very much do not) I did want to know what exactly was written on the sheet of folded line paper now sitting innocuously at the corner of my desk.

Hey, you never know. Maybe he's writing me to tell me he's going to stop annoying the crap out of me now. It could happen.

So eventually the curious side of my brain won out.

Damn you, curiosity.

I jerked my hand out and unfolded the paper before I could change my mind.

_Hey. I think we got thing's started on the wrong foot. Maybe we should start over. I'm Jared._

You got to be kidding me.

The bastard wants to start over? I'm thinking it's just a little to late for that. Especially considering he can't even be bothered to remember why I seem to hate his guts.

I picked up my pen and stabbed it towards the paper a little overzealously, accidentally poking a hole into it. I took a minute to calm myself , in order to resist the temptation to throw my pen across the room, before writing back.

Well, not so much across the room as at Jared…..and not so much my pen, as a stapler.

_There's no need for us to start over, because that would imply that we are starting at all, which we most definitely are not. Now, leave me alone before I throw a stapler at you._

I didn't bother to fold the paper before chucking it onto Jared's desk. I did so very obviously and slowly, hoping that Mr. Maddox would see it and confiscate it before Jared has any more opportunities to try and converse with me.

Unfortunately, this did me no good. By this time Mr. Maddox had already started to snore lightly in his chair.

I turned back to my chemistry homework and tried to go on ignoring Jared. Despite this I heard him pick up his pen and start to write a response apparently not at all perturbed my threat.

Damn it. When threats of violence with office supplies won't help you, what will?

The little piece of paper landed on my desk once again, neatly folded into a perfect square. Normally by now I would just be ignoring him but it was too late. He had already tore my focus away from my bookwork and I was almost shamefully curious to read what he had written in response.

_A stapler, huh? That's an odd choice of weapon if you ask me, but who am I to judge?_

What? Is he trying to be witty now? And don't think I didn't notice that he completely ignored the first part of my note.

_I could just as easily use the three hole punch over on the teachers desk, if you would find that to be more satisfactory._

Jared snorted while he read my response and put his own pen to the paper again, before placing it carefully back on my desk.

_Gee, that doesn't really work for me either. Can't you pick something a little more, oh I don't know, soft? How about that eraser for the white board over there?_

I quickly jotted down my response and chucked it roughly onto his desk, causing it to almost fall off the side and having to scramble after it.

He smirked as he read what I had written down_, If it was light that would completely defeat the point of my throwing it at you, now wouldn't it?_

His pen scratched lightly over the surface of the paper again before sending it back over my way. Once again, I noticed that he set the page down very carefully in front of me as if myself and everything around me was liable to crumble at a touch to rough.

_Point taken. Do you want to get something to eat after this?_

He did not just ask me out. Had he lost his damn mind?

I decided to ask him so.

_Are you crazy? Generally when your average girl threatens to harm you using school supplies she doesn't mean it as an indication that you should ask her out._

This time I closely watched Jared's face while he read what I had written, watching for any signs of dementia.

Whatever drugs he's taking must be pretty strong to have a high that lasts all through the school day and detention.

He placed the paper in front of me again, watching me with his usual in awe expression while I read what he had wrote.

_For some reason nothing about you strikes me as being 'the average girl'. So that's a 'no' to going out, then?_

I scoffed loudly, a noise that caused Mr. Maddox to stir slightly in his chair before his snores picked up again, before sending the paper sailing back over to Jared desk where he caught it in one hand.

Show off.

_That's a _hell_ no._

Jared frowned at the paper before picking up his pen. But before he could write out a response Mr. Maddox came to, snorting and mumbling to himself in the small computer chair before straightening himself and looking around wildly as he regained his bearings.

"Oh, well that's plenty of time to reflect on your actions if you ask me." Mr. Maddox stated to shuffle his papers into a neat stack and straightened his time, "I trust that you both have thought seriously about the behavior that landed you in here and have learned your lessons. You all can go now."

I smiled sweetly at Mr. Maddox as I shut my chemistry book closed with a loud snap and shoved it roughly into my bag. Beside me Jared unfolded his large frame from behind the desk and straightened up, his back cracking loudly. I thought I heard him mumble something that sounded oddly like, 'Damn, human form' before turning to face me. Time to get my ears checked again, I guess.

Jared neatly folded up the paper that we had used for our illegal note passing activities and shoved it into his front pocket.

That boy is damn weird.

"Is someone giving you a ride?" Jared asked, with a pathetically hopeful expression on his face.

"That's really none of your business." I answered as I stepped around him towards the door that Mr. Maddox had already left through.

Jared ignored me, "Well, I could give you a ride if nobody is coming for you."

"I'm just fine walking, thanks." I replied.

"You shouldn't walk alone. It's dangerous." Jared looked so serous while he said this that I was forced to laugh.

"Dangerous? In La Push? Oh, yeah. What's going to happen? Is a giant web of moss going to attack me?"

He frowned at me but I just opened the door and stepped out of the classroom before he could try to stop me again. I hate guys who think I'm some pathetic little wimp who needs to be protected.

I think it should be painfully obvious by now that I'm neither pathetic nor little.

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While I walked along the path next to the woods that lead the way to my home I could here ruffling in the bushes next to me. I shook off the feeling of being watched and tried to let go of any lingering paranoia.

When I opened the door to my house and stepped inside I heard a wolf howl somewhere in the trees of the forest. But this, of course, is nothing unusual. We're known for our particularly large mutant strain of wolves here.

Must be something in the water.

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A/N- Sorry if this chapter is shorter than the others but my profile was acting up and wouldn't let me update. I'll try to get the next chapter up more quickly and hopefully it'll be better because I didn't much care for this one.

I'm so close to a hundred reviews I could squeal. I won't though, because that would be weird…and it would wake up everybody in my house.

Review or I'm going to find you and throw a stapler at you. If I were you I'd opt to review because I have good aim.


	11. Chapter 10 Jealousy is a disease Get w

Disclaimer- No, wishes do not cone true, after all.

Chapter 10- Jealousy is a disease. Get well soon!!!!

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Well, I'm just going to come right out and say it. Somebody has to.

Everybody in all of La Push (excluding myself, of course) is on hard drugs.

It's kind of tragic really. Just think of all rehab counselors we're going to have to hire. Taxes are definitely going to go up. It's pretty much unavoidable.

Ok, perhaps I'm exaggerating the littlest bit . But still, an alarming number of La Push residents have lost they're mind all around the same time. It can't just be a coincidence.

So, naturally, drugs are looking like a fairly reasonable explanation.

Just try to think of another excuse for Paul Lansing's current behavior, because that's the only one I can think up.

Except for the ever popular alien abduction, of course. But I can't help but think that if aliens wanted a human specimen to study, they could do a lot better than Paul Lansing.

I'm just saying.

By now I'm sure you're wondering what said 'current behavior' might be.

This current behavior I speak of is Paul standing stock still in the middle of the aisle between the row of desks that lead to his seat staring, opened mouthed at one of my very best friends.

The same friend that he had always made it his soul mission in life to torture every waking moment she was around him.

Ding-ding! You guessed it.

Paul Lansing was staring at my friend, Sara Burnheart, like she had just crowned him king of La Push. (Hmmm, now where do I know that look from?)

I think a recap is going to be necessary.

The door slammed back against the wall with excessive force revealing an angry looking, not to mention HUGE, Paul.

Paul didn't offer his apologies to the shocked and slightly terrified looking Mr. Maddox for his tardiness. He also didn't greet any of his friends or any of the girls he usually flirted with before and after class, a favor they all readily returned.

Every person he glared at on his way into the classroom either shied back or gave terrified looking nervous smiles until his glare drifted away from them to the next poor unsuspecting victim. The class as a whole seemed entirely to frightened to even acknowledge his arrival.

Well, unless you count staring, slack jawed at him, in which case they did acknowledge him. If you're going to count that, then they practically threw him a welcome back party.

While everyone else seemed about ready to shit themselves over Paul's arrival, Sara, of course, did not.

She might hate him, but I never got the feeling she was afraid of him. I don't think my friend's afraid of anything except saturated fats and scales.

Sara rolled her eyes and sighed loudly.

Too loudly apparently.

Paul snapped his head up to glare at Sara , who was looking towards the wall clock, and snarled out, "You got a problem? Because if you do I can…."

And that's just about where he dried up.

Sara had snapped her head back to meet his eyes and hit him with her truly world class scowl (a look known to castrate men on sight) when he froze.

The second their eyes met, Paul looked like somebody had just tazered his ass.

Whereas, Sara just continued to look like Paul was the largest nuisance to ever be placed on this planet (Which he probably is, second only to Jared of course.)

"What will you do, Paul?" Sara snapped, "Gawk at me some more?"

Paul's only response to this was, you know it, more staring with a few loud shallow breaths added in to shake things up.

How can you tell if somebody's having a stroke? Not that I would particularly care if Paul were to drop dead on the spot (if anything I'd be the one organizing the parade that would surely follow such an event) but I don't want Mr. Maddox to get in trouble for having a student die on his watch. Not after putting in so much effort to ensure a good grade in his class. It's too late in the year to suck up to an entirely new teacher.

"Uhhh………I……You…….ahhh" Paul croaked out.

Wow. His vocabulary has actually gotten shorter. I didn't think that was possible.

Sara looked unimpressed, and cocked one eyebrow at him. I had never been able to do that. You know, the whole moving just one eyebrow thing.

By now the entire class was staring back and forth between Sara and Paul. No doubt they were as flummoxed by this as I was. It was quite well known the true nature of their relationship.

That nature being, Sara trying to ignore Paul while Paul tries to make Sara suicidal.

Mr. Maddox cleared his throat loudly from the front of the room and the class slowly turned their attention back to him, " Everybody turn to page one hundred and sixty three. Mr. Lansing, if you would be so kind as to take your seat so we can begin the lesson."

Paul didn't appear to have heard the teachers simple request if the way he continued to stare at Sara in amazement was any indication. Somewhere in the last two minutes his mouth had started to randomly open and close like a fish on dry land.

Jared leaned out of his seat a bit so that he was leaning closer to Paul, "Damn it, Paul! Sit down!" He whisper yelled.

"Mr. Lansing!" Mr. Maddox had begun to show a hint of irritation in his tone, "If you have a problem with your seat, I'm sure they have one up in the deans office that might better suit you."

Paul tore his eyes away from Sara for the first time before quickly settling them back onto her, as if they hurt too much while doing anything else.

Jared scooted out of his seat and went to stand in between Paul and Sara. Paul growled at him.

Wait. Growled? Really?

Well, if anybody I know would growl it would be Paul.

Jared calmly set both of his hands onto Paul's bulky shoulders and shoved him two paces down the aisle before more or less forcing him into his seat.

Normally, Paul would have made a huge scene, probably a huge _violent_ scene, at being handled in such a way but he was too busy trying to crane his neck to see around Jared's large form that was blocking his view of Sara to fight back.

Jared released his hands from Paul's shoulder. I half expected him to jump right back up but just when it looked like he might do just that Jared quickly stepped to the left so the Paul once again had an open view of Sara. Paul relaxed back into the small seating space available in the standard school desk, his eyes yet again settling on an annoyed looking Sara.

"Sorry about that, Mr. Maddox." Jared apologized for his friend and sat back down in his seat to my left, ignoring the stares of the whole first period Algebra two class and shooting a lingering glance my way.

I had become accustomed to this over the last week. While he no longer flat out gawked at me for the whole fifty five minute period anymore, Jared never went longer than about a minute and a half with out looking my way. It was like he was trying to reassure himself that I was still there, sitting safely in my too small school desk, doodling pictures in the margins of my notes and trying to ignore him.

The rest of the period passed slowly while I alternated between trying to dissect Paul's recent change in behavior and glaring at Jared whenever I caught him looking at me.

Since Jared had been semi-stalking me for about a week now I was almost used to this new and strange treatment. So much so that it didn't even fluster me anymore to know that he was more or less tracking my every move and would most likely try to corner me after class in an attempt to make inane comments, like complimenting my shirt or asking me if I needed a ride home.

Sara, however, wasn't used to life as a stalking victim. As time went on and Paul's intense stare of awe didn't begin to waver she grew more and more frustrated. She would wiggle uncomfortably in her seat, uncross and cross her arms over and over, huff loudly and tap her pen insistently on the edge of the desk.

By the time the bell rang out shrilly over head Sara flew out of her chair and darted out the door before anyone else. Paul, of course, quickly followed.

I have a feeling this won't end well.

"Kim." Jared spoke up from beside me where he stood with his things all gathered up and in his bag, smiling hopefully at me.

"Jared." I said, flatly.

He didn't seem to notice my unwelcoming tone and his grin, if at all possible, spread even wider across his handsome face.

"Can…can I walk you to your next class? It's English, right?"

In case you didn't catch on, yes, he had memorized my entire schedule. Often, he'd be waiting in the hallway outside my classroom's just to say high or send me a wave I'd pretend not to see.

Is it too soon to call the cops yet?

This is just the kind of stuff that happens before a girl ends up in the channel five news or as the 'true story' used as inspiration in a low budget horror movie.

I swear to god, if I find him in my shower the bastard is going down. I know kick-boxing. I could take him.

I turned to my would-be stalker and answered him, "Thanks, but I think I can find my own way to English class all by myself. But, if it makes you feel any better, I'll be sure to leave a trail of bread crumbs in my wake in case I get lost."

I left just in time to see Jared's hopeful smile falter.

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"Oh, Kate!" Amy Fink's shrill voice pulled me out of a daydream that, oddly enough, involved Sara roasting Paul's large intestines over an open fire and babbling on about calories.

My day dreams just keep getting weirder and weirder. Although, as of this morning, I'd say this one actually seems pretty likely.

I jerked my head up to see Amy and Shandra standing against the back wall of my English classroom and looking at me expectantly.

I guess this mean's I'm Kate.

"Hey, Andy and Sasha." I greeted with a sarcastic smile.

Amy just snorted at the mix-up with the names and slithered towards me, swinging her non-existent hips and beckoning her lap dog to follow her with two fingers.

"So, how was detention?" Amy asked with a sneer.

Oh, look! It wants to be friends!

"Well, like any other part of my life that I have to endure without your sunny presence, I can assure you detention was bleak and dull." I said, with obvious false sincerity, "Why do you ask?"

"We heard you had it with Jared." Shandra spoke up from behind Amy, earning her a annoyed glare from her master.

I tilted my head to the side and considered Shandra, "Huh. And here I thought Amy had had you de-barked."

Shandra just blinked at me, obviously not understanding. Amy however turned red, indicating that she had understood my thinly veiled insult. She always had been the smarter of the two, even if only by a little.

Let's face it. Shandra isn't exactly what I would call steep competition in the intelligence department. But I wouldn't take her on in a contest about reality television trivia.

Amy swept her chemically treated hair over one of her scrawny bird shoulders and glared at me, leaning forward and putting her bony hand on my desk, "Let's just get right to the chase here, Kate."

I narrowed my eyes at her and leaned back in my chair, putting more distance between her and me, crossing my arms over my chest (Which, by the way, is a whole lot bigger than hers. Not that it's a competition…but if it was I'd be winning.).

"Let's." I agreed.

"We want you to stay away from Jared." Amy said, straightening back into her usual prim and proper posture.

Shandra nodded her agreement from behind Amy's left elbow.

"I'd love to, " I informed the deficient duo, "Unfortunately, he's not letting me."

Amy snorted derisively, "Yeah, right. Everyone can see the way you're constantly throwing yourself at him."

Shandra added an ever compelling, "Yeah!" from behind Amy.

Throwing myself at him?

Ignoring someone, telling them off every chance you get and basically rebuffing any and all attempts they make to communicate with you is throwing yourself at someone? Huh. Who knew?

"I don't throw myself at anyone, and certainly not _Jared Ferdy_." I said, with dignity.

Amy caught on to the tone I used with Jared's name, "And what, exactly, is wrong with Jared?"

"Oh, nothing. As long as you don't mind dating one of Satan's minions." I told her.

"Oh, please!" Amy exclaimed loudly, drawing the attention of student at near-by desks, "You're just upset that he's so obviously out of your league."

Well, that's about enough of that, I think.

I stood up from behind my desk, emphasizing the fact that I was a whole foot taller than her and had about thirty pounds on her, "Don't go getting your tiny little panties all up in a bunch just because you can't get the guy you want to go out with you. If Jared doesn't want you it has nothing to do with me, it's probably just because he has better taste than I thought."

I carefully marked this down as a victory on my mental score board as I gathered my things to move away from Amy.

Amy:0 Kim:1

Someone in the room whistled, long and low and a few people let out bursts of nervous laughter. Amy turned pink again, under about an inch and half of make-up and Shandra stared at me blankly, obviously not understanding that Amy had just lost a fight.

And, stupid me, I thought that Amy had lost the fight. Little did I know, this was just one battle in a war. A war I would end up loosing, big time.

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A/N- I know that in the books Paul imprints on Rachael but I wanted him to imprint on Sara in this story. No offense meant to any Paul/Rachael fan's out there.

I also know that Jared's last name is Thail, but I didn't when I started this story and I'm not about to go back and change every time I ever said his name. You'll just have to forgive the continued name mix-up. Sorry.

Scroll on down and click on the little button that says 'review' on it like a good little reader. That's it. Go on. Don't be afraid. The review button won't hurt you. The review button is your friend.


	12. Chapter 11 In a mad world only the mad

Disclaimer- *Sob* Why won't you people just leave me alone, already? *sniffle* I said I'm not her!

Chapter 11- In a mad world only the mad are sane.

"I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth. - Janeane Garofalo

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Wow.

I'm glad I'm not the intended recipient for that look.

I wonder if it actually hurts to have somebody glaring laser beams into the back of your skull. I'd imagine it'd have to smart a little.

Sara had just finished her lively retelling of the Paul incident from first period, and was too busy being annoyed with the sudden change in Paul's behavior to notice the death glare Tiffany was sending her way.

Ally and Tiff's initial reaction was complete disbelief. Sara had always been known to exaggerate a little bit.

Not to mention, it's hard to have to accept that every popular guy in school is a few cards short of a full deck.

Nonetheless, it was hard to argue with the facts. The facts being that I could vouch for Sara's retelling of the story, half the school was still abuzz with the sudden news (they, too, suspect drugs) and, of course, that Paul hadn't stopped staring at Sara since she sat down.

Needless to say, Tiffany is just _thrilled_ with this new development. *Note the sarcasm here*

"Is he still staring?" Sara asked, ducking her head down over her plate of lettuce.

I looked back to where Paul had seated himself, alone and away from his usual group, and quickly faced forward again, "Yep." I said, popping the 'p'.

"I have to go." Tiffany suddenly announced, pushing away from the table and darting out the cafeteria doors.

Ally sighed heavily, before grabbing her bag and standing up, "I'll follow her."

Sara murmured a thanks before plopping her head down onto her crossed arms. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Paul straighten in his seat and look concerned.

Well, this is just great. Ally left me to care for the depressed. I'm no good at that! It's why I keep her around in the first place. Sheesh!

"This sucks." Sara mumbled from between her arms.

"It's not that bad," I consoled…or tried to anyway.

Sara snorted and lifted her head to stare at me in disbelief, "Not that bad? Paul Lansing is staring at me like he expects me to pull a super-man at any moment and go save the world from immanent doom. Would you be calling that 'not that bad' if it were happening to you."

I raised my eyebrows at her and cocked my head towards where I now knew for certain that Jared was sitting and staring at me intently while Amy and Shandra fluttered around him, trying to tear his attention away from yours truly.

Sara sighed, "I forgot," she mumbled before dropping her head down again.

"It really isn't that bad." I assured her, "I mean sure it's annoying, and you feel like you're always being watched which you are, and they pop out of every damn hallway you try to walk down, and you have to try and find new ways to get to your classes without seeing them which makes you late all the time, and then you have to deal with the swarm of tiny popular girls who are jealous and spreading rumors that you're in love with your would-be stalker and…"

"Kim!" Sara pulled her head away from her arms again to scowl at me, "Promise me that if I ever call you when I'm suicidal you'll transfer me to Ally."

Sara pulled her bag out from under the table and emptied her mostly full tray out into the trash can before mumbling a good-bye at me and heading out the cafeteria door. Paul quickly got up to follow her.

Jeez, when did everyone get so damn sensitive?

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"Hey, Kim!"

Eugene's voice greeted me, as enthusiastically as ever, as I made my way through the door to my chemistry classroom. The poor guy had been getting a lot of my residual anger from the whole Jared situation. Their sunny attitude and hopefulness were entirely too much alike for my taste.

I have to constantly remind myself that Eugene had never asked me out, made me be a bitch to my best friend, and stand me up at a school dance in front of everyone.

I pushed Jared out of my mind and pulled out my seat next to Eugene before greeting my lab partner, "Hey, Eugene."

"Are you going to enter the science fair, this year? First prize is a thousand bucks in scholarship money." Eugene asked, conversationally.

Wow, this poor little dude doesn't know me at all. I spend my weekends avoiding homework and watching reruns of bad TV shows while hanging with my friends. The only person I know, other than Eugene apparently, who would ever willingly enter into any sort of academic competition is Ally.

"No, I think I'm going to have to pass this year." I answered, with a polite smile.

Eugene deflated a little and mumbled out a disappointed sounding, "Ok."

Obviously he was hoping the science fair would be some sort of wonderful bonding experience for us. Shit. I'm going to have to find a way to nip this in the bud before it gets out of hand.

How exactly do you tell someone whom you like that you just don't like them _that way _without it being totally awkward and ruining the wonderful lab-partner relationship you have? Especially when that 'lab-partner' relationship involves him doing most of the work and guaranteeing you an 'A'?

Any suggestions?…..Didn't think so.

Luckily Mrs. Turner came in and started the lesson, aiding me in my blatant procrastination of awkward conversations.

The lesson passed slowly, with Eugene throwing me what I'm sure he thought were very sneaky and well concealed glances as Mrs. Turner rambled on about why you should add acid to water instead of water to acid.

Very interesting, I can assure you.

I had started daydreaming about my lunch about halfway through.

Mmmm…egg salad.

Taking this into consideration it should come as no surprise that it took me a couple of minutes to realize that the teacher was calling my name.

"Kimberly?" Mrs. Turner said when I threw an apologetic glance her way, "Can I see you after class? I want to talk to you about the essay you turned in on Friday."

"Sure thing, Mrs. Turner, " I smothered a sigh and tried not to look completely annoyed. It was the end of a day. The last thing I want to do is hang around here and be subjected to writing criticism.

In case you haven't gone right ahead and guessed this already, I don't handle criticism very well. I mean, sure, I'll stand there and smile and nod politely but the whole time I'll be coming up with ways to hide the body in my head.

Eugene wished me luck while he grabbed his mount Rushmore sized backpack and hoisted in onto his scrawny little shoulder.

Come to think of it Amy and Eugene both have roughly similar body types.

Eugene just stared at me for a minute while I randomly burst out into giggles (I was imagining him in one of Amy's famous micro-mini skirts) before smiling at me nervously and rushing out of the room.

I pushed back my chair and looked expectantly towards Mrs. Turner, who had taken a phone call somewhere in the last two minutes and was chatting contentedly into the phone.

I cleared my throat loudly and her head shot up. Mrs. Turner shot me an annoyed look (like _I_ had asked _her_ to stay after class before taking what was obviously a personal call) and held up one finger in the classic wait-patiently-while-I-waste-your-time signal.

So I waited patiently.

For the first fourteen minutes and forty-two seconds.

For the next five minutes I started to pace back and forth hoping to draw her attention back to me.

She didn't even glance up as she broke into a loud cackle over something the apparently _fascinating_ person on the phone had said.

I sighed loudly and decided to rudely interrupt the way your parents always told you not to but never followed themselves, "Mrs. Turner?"

She glanced up at me and made an extremely annoyed expression before telling the person on the phone who had so raptly held her attention for the past twenty minutes that she would call them back. Mrs. Turner placed her phone back into it's original position and straightened in her computer chair to face me.

She smiled tightly at me before pulling what appeared to be my essay from a stack of papers pilled high on her cluttered desk, "Kimberly. The essay you wrote is good but there were a few key points you failed to touch on."

Well, I could hide the body in the woods.

"I'm afraid you didn't describe the experiment as thoroughly as I would have liked you to…"

Burning it is always another option.

"…and I'd like you to check your results with you classmates before you turn in a paper…"

I could dump it in the lake.

"…It could also stand to be a little bit longer. You know, when you get to college…."

There is always the ever popular dismemberment option made famous by serial killers everywhere…

"Do you understand, Kimberly?"

We have so many wolves here, I could probably make it look like she was attacked…

"Kimberly?"

I started out of my daydreaming and smiled brightly at Mrs. Turner, "I understand. I'll try to do better next time."

"I look forward to your next essay. Have a nice day." She had already picked up the phone and started dialing again.

I glanced up at the clock on my way out the door. School had let out thirty minutes ago.

Damn, damn, damn.

I know what you're thinking. Why would I be panicking over thirty measly minutes?

Well, in freshman year Tiffany's constant flirting had kept us all waiting around the car for about an hour and half every day after school waiting for her to get her hormonal butt into the car. So I, having one of my frequent brilliant moments, had instated the first car-pool rule.

If you weren't at the car by thirty minutes after the bell your ass was getting left behind.

Of course, when I came up with this rule I was the picture of punctuality and never stopped to consider that it might affect me.

So, naturally, I started to haul ass down the hallway after realizing the time. It was looking a lot like hail and I so didn't want to walk the two and a half miles home.

I turned the corner to the math wing as break-neck pace and rammed my late ass directly into a brick wall.

Well, what felt like a brick wall anyway.

"Oh, god!" Jared's frantic voice reached my ears through all the chirping the pretty blue birds were making while flying in circles around my head, "Kim? Kim! Are you alright?"

I felt Jared's over-heated hands tugging on me until I shook my head to clear away my new feathered friends just in time to be pulled to me feet by my over-anxious stalker.

Jared's hands started to skim me over, first over my ribcage then my arms and legs, obviously checking for some sort of undetected injury.

"Hey!" I snapped when his hand roamed a little to close to the twins, "Watch the hands, buddy! You didn't even buy me dinner!"

I shoved his hands roughly off of me before I straightened my clothing and made evil eyes at him just to let him know I was on to him.

Jared held his hands up in surrender (or to let me know I was safe from them at the moment, couldn't quite tell which) "Sorry!" He looked flustered and ran his hands over his newly cut hair, "Are…are you ok?"

I nodded and bent down to retrieve my stuff only to find Jared already crouched down on the school's faded linoleum floors stacking my books into a neat pile.

Wow, he moves fast. Probably an important skill for a stalker.

"So, what were you running for anyway?" He asked while he handed me my things.

"Shit!" I cursed loudly, before taking off at a full sped run towards the double doors leading to the parking lot.

The same parking lot that was now empty, except for a few teachers cars and some detention frequenters.

Jared stopped next to me and looked around at the vacant concrete before turning and frowning at me, "What's wrong?"

"My friends left," I murmured, forgetting that I was trying to avoid any and all conversation with him.

Jared nodded slowly before his face broke out into a huge grin.

Uh-oh.

"So," he said hopefully, glancing at me speculatively, "You need a ride?"

God hates me. There's simply no other explanation for it.

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A/N- Sorry about the wait. I was trapped under the tight constrictions of my evil chemistry homework. Burn in hell, unit conversions!

By now you better know the drill. You shower me with reviews praising me for my exquisite brilliance and I'll reward you with another chapter. *sigh* It's a lovely little relationship we have, isn't it?


	13. Chapter 12 Are you thinking what I'm th

Disclaimer-If I say I'm her do I get all the money for Twilight?…Yes?…Well, in that case; Yes, I am S.M.

Chapter 12- Are you thinking what I'm thinking that I think that you're thinking I'm thinking? Because if you think that I think what I think I'm thinking then we've got a problem.

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I watched in horror as Jared fished his car keys out of his pocket and pointed them towards a shiny red truck, clicking open the locks.

Oh, god. Please tell me it hasn't come to this.

Ok, I just need to calm down and consider my options for a minute here.

I could call my mother.

But that, of course, would have to involve being in the same car as my mother, a situation I've long since sworn off. Ever since she got out of the car to help direct traffic outside my middle school when the crossing guard was nowhere to be found.

Needless to say, I walked home till Ally got her license.

I could call Ally to come and get me. Except that this is her designated homework time (yes, you heard me correctly. She designates time for homework. I love her, but she couldn't be a bigger nerd if she bought a pocket protector and tried out for the marching band) during which her cell is always turned off.

Sara and Tiffany both can't drive, so they're out.

I could always walk home. I mean sure, it looked like hail but when was the last time a couple of golf ball sized ice chunks hurt anybody, really?

"Kim." Jared's voice interrupted my thoughts.

I turned to look at him, still calculating alternate ways home, "Yeah?"

"Just get in the car." he sighed.

I raised an eyebrow at him and crossed my arms over my chest, waiting.

He rolled his eyes, "Please." he amended.

Hail or Jared?

Physical bruises or mental ones?

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I suppose mental one's would heal more quickly….I think….I hope….I'll let you know.

Jared saw my will tearing down and broke out into a huge grin.

"Great!" he said enthusiastically before turning around and walking to his car, checking over his shoulder a few times to make sure I was following him (Which I was doing, only with considerable amounts of reluctance).

"Yeah, great." I mumbled while following Jared's large form across the empty parking lot.

Jared had one of those really nice, brand new shiny car's that all of the preferred kids have. Tiffany had made up the term preferred kids (or P.K for short) in elementary school when it started to become obvious that some of our classmates were preferred over others by the adults.

The P.K's always got the top cubby's, the cleanest nap mats, the new boxes of crayons and were generally good looking, good at athletics and had rich parents and clothing from the baby gap.

The P.K's, of course, grew up to be the P.T's (preferred teenagers) and now had things like designer clothing, the latest cell phones and shiny new expensive cars.

Needless to say, Jared was a P.T.

And in case you haven't gathered so yet, I'm not. A P.T, that is.

I stood back while Jared walked over to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door for me. I had watched Amy get in this car countless times, a sight that was always amusing. The car was to high up for her and she would attempt to launch herself into it until her belly was on the seat and her bony little legs were flailing out the car door while she tried to right herself.

I, however, am no Amy Fink *shudders at the thought*.

I easily pulled my body up into the truck and settled myself into the seat while Jared closed the door behind me and walked around to the other side. I took this opportunity to take a look around and do what all girls do best; judge.

Like most boys, Jared kept his car immaculately clean, with not so much as one crumpled fast food wrapper on the floor or spare change in the ashtray.

I stopped my inspection as the drivers side door opened and Jared slid in with grace you usually don't see with people his size. I wonder if he ever took ballet.

I quickly smother a laugh over the mental image of a six foot- eight Jared in tights, twirling in tune to classical music.

Jared shot another glance at me, before smiling hugely and putting his keys into the ignition.

"Seatbelt."

I looked away from where I was watching the empty parking lot to look at the large man sitting next to me, "Huh?"

"Seatbelt." Jared repeated, looking meaningfully at my unfastened seatbelt.

He hadn't started driving yet, instead opting to sit in the empty parking lot and nag me about useless safety precautions like he was Ally's counterpart.

"You can't be serous." I stared at him flatly.

Jared frowned, "About what? The seatbelt?" I nodded at him, "Why wouldn't I be serous about the seatbelt?"

I rolled my eyes at him, "My house is like five minutes away and it's all back roads. You're not going to get a ticket."

"It's not about the ticket," frowning seems to have replaced gawking in awe for the position of his favorite thing to do around me.

"If it's not about the ticket then what's the problem?" I frowned back at him, just to let him know he wasn't the only one who could do it.

Jared shrugged, "Well, what if we crash?"

I sighed at him. This, apparently, was going to be another repeat of my weekly argument with Ally.

"If we crash, I highly doubt the seatbelt is going to help me." I informed him, with a scoff.

"Of course it is. That's what it's there for."

"Oh, come on! Look at this thing!" I tugged on the seatbelt and held it out for him to see, "It's like half an inch wide! I weigh like a hundred and sixty pounds. This little piece of dental floss won't save me. If anything it'll decapitate me."

"If it wasn't going to save you then why would they bother putting it there?!" Jared exclaimed, exasperated.

Personally I was just thrilled to see an expression other that awe on his face.

I was even more thrilled when the realization that I was annoying him set in. It's about time I returned the favor.

"If you're so sold on the virtues of the seatbelt, then why aren't you wearing yours?" I asked, glancing meaningfully at his seatbeltless chest.

Jared paused for a minute and looked flustered, "Well, I don't need one."

I scoffed at him, "And why is that? Are you made of steel? Do you, by any chance, go by the name Clark Kent by day and fight crime at night?"

"No," he was starting to look peeved. Good.

"Then why is it that I desperately need to have a seatbelt on but you don't? Why are you any less likely to splatter like a bug all over the street?" I asked, sarcastically.

"I'll take my chances." He retorted.

"And so will I." I informed him, sitting back and crossing my arms stubbornly.

Jared groaned loudly and twisted the keys, the engine purring to life. I smirked, content that I had won that battle.

Until, of course, we started to move. Jared had apparently decided to compensate for the lack of a seatbelt by driving as slowly and carefully as my great grandma Fey in a snow storm.

In fact I think old Fey had more of a lead foot.

When roughly five minutes had passed and we were just reaching the exit of the parking lot I screamed my frustration and threw my hands up in defeat.

"Fine! Jesus, you win!" Jared looked over at me, seeming startled by my outburst, "I'll wear the fucking belt if you'll drive faster then an infant can crawl."

I didn't wait for his response before yanking the seatbelt roughly around me. Unfortunately my movements were too quick and jerky, since the seatbelt locked itself up, causing it to more or less strangle me after I had it around my body.

Great.

Jared didn't comment, but he did speed up…by like five miles an hour. *Sigh*

We drove in silence for a few minutes before Jared cleared his throat and glanced over at me for roughly the three-hundred and twentieth time since I got in the car.

"So…why were you here so late?"

"My teacher wanted to talk to me," I answered shortly.

Just because desperate circumstances had driven me to accept a ride from him didn't mean we were suddenly going to be friends or anything.

Apparently Jared didn't get the whole no-friends memo.

"What about?" he asked, nosily.

I sighed and looked more determinedly out my window, "Stuff." I said, vaguely.

We lapsed back into silence for a few more minutes before curiosity got the best of me.

"How about you?" I asked, "Why are you here so late?"

Jared turned pink a little and cleared his throat again, "Just…you know, hanging around."

Ah. Stupid question. Stalking is a full time job, after all.

It occurred to me, perhaps a little too late admittedly, that it might not have been my brightest of ideas to get into the car with my little would-be-stalker here. These are just the kind of things you yell loudly at people in bad horror movies for doing.

It also didn't help that he apparently already knew where I lived, if the direction he was driving in was any indication, with no directions whatsoever from me.

Oh, shit. He's going to kill me and dump my body in the woods, I just know it.

Damn it! Why do these things always have to happen to me?

Ok, Kim, just calm down. Deep breaths. That's it; in-out, in-out, in-out.

Fuck it. Breathing won't help me.

I stealthily turned myself in my seat, despite the chokehold my seatbelt still had me in, and glanced around the small back seat to look for any blunt objects that might be able to double as a weapon in case I needed to Jackie Chan my way out of this situation.

"What are you doing?" Jared asked, confused.

Apparently I wasn't as discrete as I thought I was in my little search.

"Nothing," I said, righting myself in my seat and making little squinty eyes at him, to let him know that I was on to him so he better not try anything funny.

He shot me a concerned look out of the corner of his eye. Like _I_ was the potential rapist and murdered in the car.

"So…do you want to grab a bite to eat before you head home?" Jared asked hopefully. "There's this great little burger joint down by the pier."

"I'll pass." I said, rudely, and without thinking "I don't make it a habit to have casual meals with my stalkers."

No! Come back words!

Why? Why, mouth? Why did you have to decide to taunt the potential serial killer?

Jared froze, and slowly turned to look at me.

"You think I'm stalking you?" he sounded angry, which was a first for him so far as I could tell.

When he wasn't standing you up at school dances as a joke he was usually a pretty affable type of guy.

Not now though.

I watched as Jared's hands started to shake slightly on the steering wheel.

"Well, what would you think?" my mouth continued on without any consent whatsoever from my brain, "You _just happen _to turn up everywhere I am? Yeah, right. You're outside of everyone of my classes, you stare at me in the lunch room, and you coincidentally happen to 'hang around' the same day I have to stay after school. It sounds a little bit stalkerish to me."

"You honestly believe I'm _stalking_ _you_?" he asked, disbelieving.

Well, I don't think I like what he's implying here.

"What?" I snapped at him, causing his eyes to widen, "I'm not good enough to stalk, am I?"

"NO!" Jared said quickly, backtracking. From the look on his face I could tell he was confused about how the tables had gotten turned on him so quickly.

"No, what? No, I'm not good enough to stalk?" I sent my best glare a him, my head swimming with visions of his immediate castration.

Either Jared was a mind-reader or my look spoke volumes. Either way, he scrambled to cover his mistake.

"Of course you're good enough to stalk!" he stammered, "You're great. Who wouldn't want to stalk you?"

"So you admit it?"

"Admit what?" he asked, looking wary.

"That you're stalking me," I confirmed.

"Of course not!" Jared exclaimed, looking outraged.

"So, it's a total coincidence that you suddenly just happen to be everywhere I am? That every time I look at you you're looking at me?" I asked, doubtfully.

"Well…no," he admitted.

"Aha!" I exclaimed, ready to get out my phone and call the cops.

"Wait!" he said before I could so much as reach towards my bag, "I'm not stalking you! I wouldn't call it that."

"Then what would you call it," I inquired.

"It's more like…watching intently." he said, slowly.

Oh, puh-lease. That's just what they say before they start steeling your underwear and scaring off all your friends.

I made a noise of doubt in the back of my throat, but we were turning the corner of my house so I didn't push it.

Jared rolled the car to a stop in front of my house and I disentangled myself from the malicious seatbelt.

"Good-" I slammed the car door shut half way through his good-bye and marched myself up the steps and quickly let myself in to the house, not looking back behind me, where I knew he was watching me.

I locked the door behind me. It never hurts to be too safe, just in case.

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Review or I'm going to run you over with Jared's truck…..please opt to review. I have no idea how I'd get my hands on his truck.


	14. Chapter 13: Do not walk behind me, for I

Disclaimer- I've run out of witty way's to inform you all that I'm not S.M. Tis a sad day, indeed.

Chapter 13- Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me the hell alone.

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"I'm sorry!" Ally exclaimed for the seventh time since I got in the car.

I had been spending the whole night avoiding her calls and text messages. When given time to stew in anger over the whole driving home with Jared thing I've done what any other girl would do.

I've found someone to blame.

The way I see it if Ally hadn't driven off without me I never would have had to subject myself to a twenty minute drive with Jared, probably feeding into his whole stalking addiction even more in the process.

Do you have any idea how much ignoring I'm going to have to do to make up for this?

"You're the one who made the rule!" Ally shouted in exasperation when I ignored her seventh apology since I've gotten into the car.

Oh, great. Like I want to have that thrown in my face.

I snorted, "Since when do you listen to me?"

Ally shrugged, apparently pleased I was speaking with her again, even if it was rudely, "I couldn't wait. Tiffany and Sara were going to kill each other and since we didn't exactly have you there for comic relief I figured it was better if we just left."

It was true that all through out Ally's and my battle Sara and Tiff had both been steadily ignoring each other. Until, of course, they were mentioned.

Sara spoke up, "If Tiffany would do something wild and different for a change and actually act like an adult then we wouldn't have been 'almost killing each other'."

Tiffany just huffed and looked out her window, a sure fire sign that she had run out of arguments yesterday while I was coming up with ways to off my chemistry teacher. And really, what argument could she ever have? It's Paul who's suddenly tracking Sara's every move, not the other way around.

"So, how did you get home anyway?" Ally asked after a few minutes of suffocating and turning blue from all the angry tension that filled the car.

"Jared gave me a ride." I said, not looking at her and awaiting her reaction.

"What?!" Ally gasped.

Tiffany came out of her huff and looked back at me, "Seriously?"

Sara's face donned a look of shock, "Excuse us?"

I threw my hands up in exasperation, "Well, what did you all expect me to do?"

"Walk home!" Sara said, like this was the obvious solution.

"It was going to hail." I reminded her.

"You could have called one of us." Tiffany said.

"It was Ally's homework time and you all can't drive, in case you forgot."

The car lapsed into shocked silence for a few minutes. Surprisingly, Ally was the one to break the silence. Even more surprisingly was what came out of her mouth.

"So, what? Are you guys friends now?"

"God, no! Why the hell would you go and think something like that?" I asked, honestly shocked.

I can think of about a million things that would happen before Jared and I would become friends. Pig's flying, hell freezing over, Paul passing math class…

"It just seems a little bit odd is all," Ally went on to say, " I mean, you hate his guts yet you're willing to get into a car with him? What is that?"

"That's _desperation, _not friendship! Jeez!" I flung my hands up in annoyance and glared at the back of Ally's headrest.

I wonder how hard I'd have to concentrate to make laser beams shoot out of my eyes.

"I don't know, Kim." I slowly turned my head to face Tiffany, my face blank with shock and all thoughts of cool death ray vision abilities shattered, "I think you may be going soft on us."

"Excuse me?" I said, being sure to implement my creepy you-don't-know-for-sure-whether-or-not-I-would-kill-you voice.

Sara, who was apparently left unaffected by my voice of doom, backed up my other two so-called 'friends', "You _did _call him Jared. What ever happened to '_The Bastard_" or '_Ass-Face'_?"

"Ass-face is _your_ term of endearment for Paul, if you'll recall." I reminded her, "And I am by no means 'going soft'."

We lapsed into silence, while I contemplated whether or not having friends was really worth all the hassle before Tiffany broke the tension. She always hated the silence.

"Well, alright then." She said cheerfully, "So nothing's going on?"

"Nothing is going on." I repeated adamantly.

Tiff nodded contentedly and Sara pulled a protein bar out of her bag and started to look through the nutrition label, both having lost interest in my nonexistent relationship with Jared.

Ally, however, watched me in the review mirror the whole way to school.

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"Kate!"

I banged my head against the cool metal of the locker doors in the vain hope that perhaps the high whiny, bird-like voice was just in my head.

No such luck.

I turned around to see Amy Fink slithering my way, her lap dog trotting not far behind.

I mentally drew a leash in between the two of them for shits and giggles.

I rotated back to face my locker and continued to pull books off of the high shelves. They always gave me the highest of the school lockers, along with most of the basketball players, due to my lumberjack status.

Tiny little twerps like Amy, however, had the bottom lockers. Not that she minded, of course. This meant she got to bend over frequently, earning herself the attention of every heterosexual male in a half mile radius. If there's one thing Amy loves it's attention. Well, attention and hair spray.

"Oh, god. Not you again." I groaned, as I slammed shut my locker door and turned around to face the she devil waiting impatiently behind me.

"I don't understand it." Amy said snidely, putting one bony hand on her scrawny jutted out hip bone.

"Don't understand what? How ice is made?" I guessed.

She chose to ignore my little slight and kept speaking as if I hadn't said anything, "I thought I told you to stay away from Jared."

Behind her Shandra nodded her head like the bobble head she shared an iq with.

"And I thought I told you laxatives didn't count as a meal. I guess we've both been ignored." I said, and slid past her and through the door to the restrooms that were stationed by my locker. Very handy in times of emergency, I can assure you.

Amy and Shandra both followed me in, shooting rude looks towards the freshman girl who was touching up her make-up in front of the mirror until she scampered out the door, leaving us alone.

Great. No witnesses.

Shandra spoke up before Amy could do so, "We heard you got a ride home from Jared."

In front of her Amy huffed, obviously annoyed at having her lines stolen by her pet puppy.

"Wow, you can speak. But can you roll-over?" I asked, feigning like I was impressed, and turned towards the mirror to check my appearance. While I'm not particularly vain, nobody wants to walk around with a booger hanging out of their nose or anything.

Shandra blinked, confused (and emotion that graces her face entirely too often, I'm afraid) and Amy quickly started talking before the attention could completely leave her.

"Maybe you don't know this, so I'm going to be nice and fill you in. Jared's mine. I don't know what he's going through at the moment or why he's suddenly shown an interest in you but let me assure you that it's fleeting. Sooner or latter he's going to see you for what you are, a nobody who's so obviously below his league. So why don't you just save us all a whole lot of time and trouble and just stop hanging around him. Okay?" Amy asked this last part cheerfully, like she was positive that I would immediately agree with whatever it was she had to say.

Wow, she's dumber than I thought. I didn't really think that was possible.

I turned away from my reflection in the mirror and took two steps toward her so we were almost nose to nose…well, nose to shoulder anyway.

"I believe we've been through this once before, but for some reason you don't seem to grasp the meaning of 'I don't like Jared'. I don't know why I'm surprised really. I imagine that there's quite a few words you don't grasp the meaning of. So, why don't we give this another try? Ok?" I made my voice go all high and cheery like hers did, "I would like nothing better than for Jared to suddenly fall right off the side of the earth. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be happening. So, if Jared up and decides he wants to stalk me and not you, well, that's not my fault and it's certainly not my problem."

Amy trilled out a high and squeaky laugh. Shandra, after taking a moment to catch on to what was happening, quickly joined in.

"Who is it that you think you're fooling? You're obviously playing hard to get, trying to catch Jared's attention. Well, I got news for you. I've staked claim. And if you keep interfering with Jared's and mine's relationship," She stepped closer and lowered her voice to a whisper like we were best buds sharing secrets about which boy's we liked or something, "you're going to regret it."

Amy turned and pushed through the door and back out into the hallway before I could make a retort. Not that I know what I would have said, of course. What, exactly, do you say when a girl who's about as big as your left leg threatens you?

Shandra stood and blinked at me for a moment, obviously confuse as to what had just went down.

"You better get going, Lassie. I don't know if your leash stretches that far." I said at the same time Amy's impatient voice shrieked from down the hallway.

"Shandra!"

Shandra, hearing the beckon of her master, quickly turned and bolted out the bathroom door.

Well, that was interesting.

While I can't say for certain, I do believe I've just been threatened by the cheerleading mafia. What happens now? Am I going to wake up with a severed Barbie's head in my bed?

I laughed to myself over the image of Amy and Shandra ninja-ing their way through my bedroom window in the middle of the night with a tote bag full of naked barbies.

Looking back on it, maybe I should have taken her threat a little more seriously. It would have saved me a whole lot of surprise latter on.

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"Kim!"

Damn it!

When did my locker become such a breathing ground for people I dislike?

"Jared," I replied, with considerably less enthusiasm.

Jared straightened up from where he had been leaning against my locker and moved to the side so I could dial my combination into the lock while he looked on.

"Do you need another ride?" I could tell he was trying not to sound too eager in his question.

He failed, in case you couldn't guess.

"No," I said shortly, pulling open the metal door and shoving my chemistry book on to an already crowded shelf.

"Ok, well…if you ever do just let me know." He shoved his hands into his pockets and shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. The motion looked odd for someone his size, "Maybe…maybe I should write down my number for you. You know, in case you ever need a ride and I'm not there."

"That won't be necessary," I said, slamming the locker door shut and starting towards the double doors that lead out to the parking lot.

"But maybe it's better you have it, anyway. My number, I mean." Jared walked with me, easily keeping up with my quickened pace.

Damn him and his freakishly long legs.

"I could just write it down for you," he continued as we pushed through to the outside of the school, "Just in case."

"I think that would be a waste of paper…and ink." I said rudely, looking around till I spotted Ally's car and making a bee-line towards it.

Jared started to look annoyed again.

Which of course, made my mood considerably brighten. I was still thrilled over my newfound ability to make him annoyed. Beets the hell out of cheerful and hopeful.

The whole constant sunnyness thing had been really getting on my nerves. I mean come on! Where's the negativity? A girl like me needs a little negativity.

"Why are you always like that?" He suddenly burst out, raking one of his large hands through his hair in exasperation.

"Always like what?" I asked innocently.

"So…so…cold." he concluded, seemingly happy with his choice of words.

Oh, look who suddenly can't handle a little rejection. I bet he's just so used to the girls swooning at his feet that he can't even comprehend my behavior.

Well, boo for him.

"I'm only rude too you," I told him, "…Well, you and telemarketers but that's beside the point."

"You're going to like me eventually." he told me.

I looked over at him, surprised. He sounded pretty sure of himself.

"Oh, you think so?" I asked, confused at his sudden change in attitude.

What happened to the annoyance? That was so much funner for me then this self-assured attitude.

"Oh, yeah." he assured me, "Everybody likes me. I grow on people."

I snorted, "Yeah? Well, so does cancer."

I speed up to get away from him and he stopped following me. When I glanced back to see his face he was frowning again.

Ah, got to love the annoyance.

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A/N- I've been getting a lot of reviews asking me if I plan on doing a separate story for Sara. Since I don't want to have to spend the entirety of this story trying to make sure I include enough Paul/Sara for you guys to get your fill I probably will write a separate Sara story when I'm done with this one if readers show a significant amount of interest. I'm not making any guarantees though.

If you don't review I'm going to leave severed Barbie heads in your bed while your sleeping. You've been warned. *makes intimidating squinty eyes*


	15. Chapter 14: The trouble with her is that

Disclaimer- Nope, still not her. Rub it in, why don't you?

Chapter 14: The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

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**"**So, what exactly is your plan here?" Tiffany asked when the guy behind the counter turned to prepare her pistachio ice cream cone. Tiff had always had very odd tastes in deserts.

"Well," I said around a mouthful of cookie dough ice-cream (yumm…), "I figured if I could just annoy him badly enough and for a long enough amount of time he'll just go away."

Yes, you heard me correctly. Just because it hasn't worked yet doesn't mean it won't work….I just need to put some effort into it….I hope.

Sara accepted her low fat vanilla ice-cream cone (Eww…) from the man working the counter with a smile and a thank-you before turning back to us, "If he's anywhere near as annoyingly persistent as Paul is I can just tell you right now that it's not going to work."

I glared at her over the top of my cone, "Hey, don't rain on my parade. This is my only hope and I won't have you pooh-poohing all over it, thank you very much."

"You know he didn't put this much effort into it last time," Ally said while she pulled out her wallet to pay for her mint-chip cone.

"Didn't put so much effort into what?" I asked, as we pushed through the double doors leading to the benches located outside the small ice-cream pallor/drug store. So you can get your rocky road and cough syrup all in the same place. It comes in handy more often then you'd think.

"Playing you," Ally explained, taking the middle seat on one of the stone benches.

"So we still think he's playing her?" Tiffany asked as she plopped down cross-legged on the grass in front of the bench.

"You got a better explanation?" Sara asked as she used her napkin to wipe down a piece of the bench before sitting down next to Ally.

"Maybe he's changed." Tiffany, ever the hopeless romantic (emphasis on hopeless, of course), proposed.

We all turned to stare at her like she had just leaped onto the picnic table and started to do the cancan.

"What?" Tiff asked, oblivious to her phopah. She grabbed a napkin and self-consciously wiped around her mouth while we all continued to stare at her in dumb shock.

"You can't be serous," Sara chocked out as her disgusting ice-cream cone began to melt and dribble down her arm.

"Are you kidding?" Ally asked, looking peeved at this turn in discussion.

"Are you on something?" I asked, suspecting drug use, "And if so, why aren't you sharing any with us?"

Tiffany rolled her eyes before she went back to licking at her green ice-cream, "It can happen, you know. People do change."

"Yes," I informed her slowly, fearing for her sanity. I wonder if her health insurance will cover a mental hospital? "_People_ change. Satan's minions, on the other hand, do not change."

"I think you're overreacting, that's all. It was in freshman year. Which one of us hasn't done something stupid as a freshman?" Tiff defended.

"Ok, that's it." I jumped up to yell at her, "Who are you an what have you done with my friend? I bet you kidnapped her at the mall, didn't you? I freaking told Tiffany that bad things happen at the mall!"

The Tiff impersonator glared at me, "Watch yourself, sister. The mall is a place of magic where wonderful things happen and dreams come true. All I'm saying is that this seems like a whole lot of trouble to go through just to fuck with some girl he barely even knows."

"Perhaps, but being one of Satan's minions, he's immortal so he has the time in the freaking world to mess with me." I reasoned, as I threw the remains of my cone in a nearby trashcan, having suddenly lost my appetite.

Tiffany shrugged and went back to lapping up some of her melted cone that had dripped onto her hand during our argument. Sara shrugged and went back to her cone as well, seeming unconcerned with our mini-drama. Ally, on the other hand, glared daggers at Tiff before she got up and threw out the remnants of her cone as well.

Well, aren't we just one big happy bunch?

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You know what? I'm getting really fucking tired of starting my Monday's this way.

Monday mornings should start out with sleeping in till your mother rudely drags you out of your lovely little cocoon of warm blankets and shoves you into the shower at the last possible minute. This should then be immediately followed with copious amounts of coffee strong enough to burn your eyebrows right off of your face, in order to salvage the morning.

The morning should then progress on to donuts in the car on the drive to school with your entirely too awake, non-caffeine addicted, friends (rides that have now been tainted by Tiffany's and Sara's constant bickering and silent matches, by the way) before you have to go to your super easy first period class where you can drool freely all over your desk while the teacher drones on and on about Shakespeare.

That, my friend, is the perfect Monday morning. Second, of course, to Monday's where there is no school but you can't win all the time.

You'll notice, of course, that nowhere in this pretty little plan of mine does an encounter with my stalker come into play.

So will somebody please explain to me why I have to slouch into school all bleary eyed on a Monday morning only to find Jared leaning casually against my locker with all the ease of a long term boyfriend?

It's just not right. Not right at all, I tell you.

God hates me, that's the only explanation.

Well, that's just great. You know what, god? I've only been to church once in my entire life and when I went I stole cookies that were meant for a christening and told my mother they were giving them away for free.

That's right. Stealing and lying in church. How do you like me now, God?

"Go away." I mumbled into my take out container of the afore mentioned eyebrow searing coffee while I tried to remember my locker combination.

"Good morning to you, too." Jared replied as he scooted to the left to let me into my locker.

I grunted at him (my preferred form of communication this early in the morning) while I twirled around the dial on my lock to the appropriate numbers.

Jared didn't seem to mind my reverting to cave man lingo on him and continued along cheerfully, "How was your weekend?"

"Well, let's see. You weren't there so I'd say it went pretty darn well." I was going full speed ahead with my whole annoy-the-hell-out-of-Jared-until-he-leaves-me-alone plan.

He frowned at me but before he could say anything another voice cut into our happy little conversation.

"Kim!"

I half turned away from my locker, where I was trying to remember which books my classes would demand of me today, (The weekend always leaves me so discombobulated whenever I get back to school on Mondays.) to see Eugene heading down the hall towards me, his usual fifty pound backpack looking as odd as ever on his 5'9 frame.

"Morning, Eugene." I said pleasantly, causing Jared to frown at me even more.

"Morning, Kim." Eugene said when he stopped near my locker, "How was your weekend? Pleasant, I hope?"

"It was ok." I said with a shrug.

I turned back towards him, prepared to ask Eugene the same question and ignore Jared in order to annoy him some more, when it occurred to me that something about this picture was a little bit off.

Eugene had drawn himself up to his full height (which still makes him barely graze 5'10, the poor guy) and his usually friendly, open face was distorted into a sort of mean squinty eyed glare he was pointing directly towards Jared.

Even more unusual was that Jared had done the same thing. Of, course in his case this means that he was around 6'10. He was also glaring down his nose at poor little Eugene.

I have to hand it to Eugene, though. For a guy trying to stare down another guy who not only had a full foot on him but also about a hundred pounds, he didn't seem all that afraid. To tell you the truth I was kind of flattered with his squinty eyed glare.

My eyes flipped back in forth between the two of them like some idiot who watches tennis while I waited for one of them to make a move. I half expected them to proceed on to the chest beating.

My mind immediately delved into some sort of odd safari documentary mode: Here we have the males of the species locked in the classic battle for dominance and rights to the female of the species. In just a moment they will commence with the head butting followed by urination on the surrounding area the female is occupying, after which they will then proceed to hump the females leg. Let us watch….

"So…" I said, when they didn't stop with their little staring match. Surely one of them would have to blink eventually. "I better get to class. The bells about to ring any second now"

This was a total lie, actually. There was still about ten minutes until the bell would ring and first period would start but I don't want to be here when they start marking territory. Can you blame me?

I didn't think so.

"I'll walk you." they both said at the same time, causing them to simultaneously up the voltage in their glares.

Did their voices just get deeper in the last five seconds?

"You know what?" I said, backing away from the both of them, "I think I can get there just fine on my own."

"I insist." Eugene said, tearing his eyes away from Jared's tense form to rest on me.

"Well, I insist more." Jared said quickly, bringing his eyes to rest on me as well.

Before I could protest (which would have taken me a while considering I was currently doing the whole deer-caught-in-the-headlights-of-a-really-mean-deer-hating-truck-driver thing) anymore they both fell into step beside me, one on either side of my body.

Awkward….

Luckily for me (Because, as it turns out, God isn't a complete sadist….or perhaps because she's just grown bored with me. Hard to tell) my first period wasn't that far from my locker.

When the tense silence threatened to make the air too thick to walk through that stupid little inane part of my brain that never wants a room to be silent kicked in and my mouth started to babble nervously entirely without my consent.

Damn you, brain. Damn you…

"I haven't finished my book report," I burst out suddenly, causing both of them to look at my odd for a moment. Great job, Kim. Like either of them care about your damn report. Actually Eugene probably would care…he's just funny like that.

I continued when neither of them said anything, "It's on Fahrenheit 451. The whole book strikes me as a little far-fetched, if you ask me. Not that either of you did, of course. But, I mean, even if you can buy the whole books being outlawed things I don't see how anybody would know if anybody else had them. I mean, come on! It's pretty easy to hide something. I hid a bag of pot in my room all through my first year of high school." My mind finally caught up to what I had just said as two pairs of startled eyes came to rest on me.

Oh, god. Why me?

Of course, I couldn't just leave it there. I can't have them walking around thinking I'm some sort of pathetic junkie who at any moment would develop a nervous tic and start to demand her next fix or something.

"Oh, it was just a phase!" I hurried to explain before they could check me into rehab, "One of the girls in my Spanish class had given me some and I kept it in my room for six months before I worked up the nerve to try any. When I did, I took two puffs and immediately began to cough so much that I made myself throw up all over my mothers brand new area rug. I told my mom I had gotten food poisoning and she made me stay home for three days. I missed a ton of class work. You know how it seems that teachers give the most stuff on the days when you're not there."

Eugene was beginning to look like he was about to call for the nice men in white scrubs to fit me for a new jacket of my very own. Jared, however, was sporting a very different look.

Jared's upper lip was twitching oddly and it didn't take me very long to realize that he was trying not to laugh at me.

The bastard! How dare he laugh at me!

Before I could tell him off for being such an ass Eugene spoke up, "Well, we're here."

We had, as it turns out, already arrived at my first period classroom. I just hadn't noticed this little fact during my babbling session.

The warning bell rang for class, indicating that we had about five minutes left to go.

"I better go." Eugene said. Being tardy might just drive the poor boy to the brink of suicide. Luckily I understood this having been friends with Ally, the punctuality freak, for so long

"Bye, Eugene." I mumbled pathetically, my face still pink from my unprovoked verbal diarrhea.

He nodded at me and sent one last glare in Jared's direction before he rushed off for class.

Jared, however, stood smirking at me, apparently unaware or unconcerned with the threat of tardiness.

I glared at him, "You can leave now."

"Ok," he said, hands in his pockets and his posture relaxed and at ease. Big change from five minutes ago. "Try not to accept any illegal materials from any of your classmates." He said before he started to walk down the hall, whistling cheerfully to himself.

"Bastard." I hissed after him, too quietly for him to hear.

Which doesn't explain why he started to chuckle…

***************************************************************************************************************************

A/N- Don't hate me! It wasn't my fault! My idiot brother spilled soda on the router and messed up my computer so I couldn't update. It just got fixed. Nonetheless, my fault or not, I will offer my apologies for the wait because I am an incredibly kind person. *Sigh*

Since we don't know each other in real life (Because I live in Las Vegas and you all live…wherever the hell you all live) and we can't touch one another, I can't throw myself into your arms and give you all the appropriate big slobbery reunion kiss that you always see in Meg Ryan movies we're just going to say that reviewing is our way of doing this. So, go on. Lay one on me (in review form, of course. Unless you want to drive all the way down to Vegas but that would be freaking creepy).


	16. Chapter 15: Don't blame yourself Let m

Disclaimer- If I was SM I never would have stopped writing just so I could keep getting richer. Twilight books could sell well for a very long time.

Chapter 15- Don't blame yourself. Let me do it.

* * *

"Aww, that is so sweet." Tiffany said while she combed her hair into two pigtails in front of my mirror.

"That is not sweet." I glared at her reflection from where I had plopped myself into a lime green beanbag chair. "This is a disaster."

"I think disaster would probably be pushing it." Sara said, in between blows to her wet nails.

"Easy for you to say. It didn't happen to you." I grumbled

"It probably won't happen again." Ally tried to comfort me while she flipped the page in her history book, "I mean, the two don't really run in the same crowd, do they?"

In case you couldn't tell I had informed them of the Jared and Eugene fiasco in the care on the ride home. They didn't seem to think anything was wrong with it.

What horrible excuses for friends. What good are they if they won't panic with me? No good at all.

"I'd love to have two guys fighting over me." Tiffany sighed wistfully as she spun the vanity seat around so she was facing us.

"You see, in theory I'm with you," I informed her gravely, "But I just never would have picked Jared and Eugene to be those two guys."

"I can see your point." She said, before she stood up to rifle through my closet without permission. How rude.

"I would have liked for them to maybe be Johnny Dep and Brad Pitt, or something." Now there was a fight any girl would love to be the cause of.

"I think I'd pick The Rock and Van Diesel." Sara informed us. She had always had a thing for the beefy guys.

"That would be an awesome fight." I said, my mind already making it a cage match.

"You think anything will come of it?" Ally asked, "The whole Eugene and Jared thing?"

I sighed, hating to have to admit to making too large of a deal out of it, "Probably not."

Tiffany snorted, the sound muffled by the fact that her entire upper body was in my closet stretching to reach the dresses that I never wear because I look like I'm in drag when I try to wear girly type stuff, "Let's hope not. I don't think Eugene would survive that particular fight."

"I think you're right there" Sara agreed.

"Could you imagine if Amy caught wind of this?" Tiffany asked, coming out of my closet with a pair of heels I never wear, "I think she'd beat you to deaf with one of her pom-poms."

"Lord knows she has the insanity plea down pat," Sara snorted.

"I'll fight her off with one of Ally's textbooks. Book beats pom-poms every time. Everybody knows that.," I said dryly.

"How are things with Amy?" Ally asked, putting away her history book in favor of her chemistry one, "Has she made any other threats lately."

"Nope." I said. And it was true.

Amy hadn't really gone out of her way to speak to me since our little bonding session in the girls bathroom last week. The glares, however, have kept coming with increasing regularity.

"What was that all about, anyway?" Tiffany asked, "Doesn't she know that you could so take her?"

Ally snorted behind her large textbook, "I don't think Amy had some sort of physical brawl in mind."

"Well, what else do you think she had in mind?" Sara asked, while she packed back up Tiffany's nail polishes.

"Well, Amy deals more with social destruction." Ally said, laying her book down on her lap and looking contemplative, "That's probably what she was threatening to do. Ruin Kim's reputation or embarrass her or something."

I snorted, unconcerned, "She's a little late for that. It's not like I'm miss popularity or anything. You won't see me running for prom queen. I don't even think I have a reputation to ruin."

Tiffany laughed, "Actually since you kneed Jared in his man goodies that's pretty much been your reputation."

I grinned at her, reliving the memory. That was a bad day all together but that particular part of it was priceless. It's still fun to watch Jared wince when I get really angry at him. I'm surprised he doesn't shield himself.

"Exactly," I said, "So what can Amy do to me?"

* * *

"Hey, Eugene." I said, as I dropped down in my seat next to his and let my bag fall to the ground.

"Hey, Kim." He said, shoving aside his open textbook and looking at me.

Oh, no. The textbook has been shoved aside. Something bad is going to happen. He takes that thing with him during fire drills.

"What's going on?" I asked suspiciously.

Eugene shrugged still watching me like I was something Mrs. Turner had plopped down on a microscope slid in front of him, "Nothing. What's going on with you?"

"Same old same old." I answered closely. I hope he's not about to ask me out again. I've had my fill of awkward moments for the week.

Eugene, to my surprise, started to turn pink and reached up to adjust his glasses. He shifted in his seat and cleared his throat nervously.

Just as I was checking down to see if one of my boobs popped out or something (well, what else would make him act that way?) Eugene spoke in a nervous voice.

"So….have you seen any more of that one guy?"

"What guy?" I asked, stupidly.

There was really only one person he could be talking about and we both knew it.

"Jared." He said his name distastefully. You know, the way most people say 'vomit' or 'mucus'.

"Oh, him." I said stupidly. Damn you, Mrs Turner. Why did today have to be the day she decided to give us free time? "Not much of him really. Just a little bit at my locker this morning. And in the cafeteria. And in the hallway."

Eugene's poor little bright blue eyes started to bug so far right out of his head that I'm fairly certain they touched the lenses of his thick-framed glasses.

"Oh, it's not like that." I hurried to explain, because if I can make a situation as awkward as possible I like to live up to my full potential, "He's just stalking me, that's all."

Ok, his eyes are officially pushing his glasses off of his face now.

I waved my hands in the air as if I could erase my previous words. I didn't want him to call the cops or anything.

"Not in a horror movie type way!" I rushed out, "More like in a annoyingly-persistent-pestering type way. He's harmless really." I added when Eugene didn't relax any.

Eugene took a couple of seconds to process this before asking me, still pink in the face, "So….you're not like….going out with him? Jared, I mean."

"No!" I said, perhaps a bit overenthusiastically.

Ok, a lot overenthusiastically if the way a couple of our classmates twisted in their seats to stare at me was any indication. But could you blame me? The day I date someone like Jared is the day that Tiffany swears off guys and starts to bat for the other team.

Eugene didn't seem to mind, though. "That's good." He seemed to have realized the connotations of what he said because he flushed all over again and hurried to explain, "Not that you can't date whoever you want of course. I mean, it is 2010. Women are liberated and everything. I'm all for the girl power."

Did he just say Girl Power? Oh, lord help him.

"I just mean," he continued, "He seems like trouble, that's all."

Now, I want to make one thing abundantly clear right here and now. I do not, under any circumstances, have any feelings for Jared (unless you count annoyance, of course. In which case I'm just a well of emotions for the guy.) but something about Eugene referring to him as 'trouble' disturbed me.

The bastard had been flat out stalking me for almost three weeks now. He's memorized my schedule, he knows my address, he stares at me every chance he gets.

It's full blown stalking, alright. No doubt about it.

But, despite this, he has failed to live up to all the lifetime movie type stalking scenarios I originally cast him into. It's been weeks since I've even considered getting a restraining order. In fact, I usually feel completely safe and at ease around him.

Annoyed, but safe.

"What makes you say that?" I asked, trying not to sound defensive.

Eugene seemed surprised I would even ask, "It's just that whole thing with Sam Uley's gang. Everyone knows that they're not up to any good."

"Well, they haven't really done anything yet." I surprised myself by saying.

Less than a month ago I was accusing these people of running some sort of underground drug ring. Now I'm defending them? Maybe I'm wrong about Jared. He probably slipped something into my coffee when I let him hold it this morning while I got my books out of my locker. I think it's time to rethink that whole restraining order thing.

"Nothing that we know of," Eugene insisted, "But come on. You have to admit they're a little suspicious."

I made a non-commental noise in the back of my throat but otherwise didn't say anything as Mrs. Turner finally got around to starting the lesson.

I was the last person you'd catch defending Jared Ferdy.

* * *

"Go away." I said immediately upon seeing Jared hovering near my locker again.

Tiffany and Sara had gone at it again during lunch and had exhausted any remains of my patience. Apparently Paul had tried to pay for a very ticked off Sara's lunch or something. I wasn't paying attention. It was taco day.

Mmmmm, tacos…

"How was your day?" Jared said ignoring me and turning around to spin in my combination for me.

How does this bastard know my combination?

"Shouldn't you know already?" I asked as I tried to shove him out of my way before he could finish my combination. It was like pushing at a brick wall - Useless and it made me look stupid, so I stopped and let him open the door for me, "You pretty much follow me through every second of it."

He frowned at me as he stepped aside, "Not every second. We only have two classes together." He disagreed.

"Really?" i said, "It seems like more."

"We don't see each other that often." He said, like this was something he wanted to change. Dream on, meat head.

I snorted in a very unladylike fashion as I tried to jam even more of my crap into a locker that was in danger of overflowing, "We see each other plenty. Our only having two classes together somehow hasn't stopped you from meeting me outside of every class and walking me to my next. Not to mention stalking me all throughout lunch."

"I'm not stalking you." Jared sighed, like this was something he said a lot. Who knows? For him it probably was.

'Stalking' had become a bit of a touchy topic for us. Mostly because he refuses to admit to being a stalker and I'm getting a bit tired of trying to find alternate routes to all of my classes.

I rolled my eyes at him as I reached up to catch a small novel my locker suddenly vomited at me from its cluttered depths. "Let's review the definition of stalking here for a minute, shall we? Following obsessively, memorized schedule, waiting for me between classes? Yes, I do believe we have all the makings of stalker here, my friend."

Jared made a little sound in the back of his throat that sounded remarkably like a growl to me.

"Did you just growl at me?" I asked, obviously offended. How dare he!

He ignored me (aw, that brings back sweet memories) and racked his hands through his hair in frustration. "I'm not trying to stalk you. I'm _trying_ to get to _know_ you."

I slammed my locker door after having wrestled all of my books securely into place and whirled around to face him with my hands on my hips, "Excuse you?"

Trying to get to know me! It's a little late for that, wouldn't you say? That's like Paris Hilton deciding upon a life of celibacy. He certainly wasn't concerned with knowing me a year ago, was he? He wasn't at all concerned about knowing the girl he decided it was his right to jerk around and mess with because she was quite and he was popular.

He opened his mouth to say something else but I cut him off before he could, "Don't bother. There's no need to try to get to know me, cause' _I _don't want to know _you_. I know enough."

"What is that supposed to mean?" He snapped at me.

I tried to walk away from him but he kept talking when it became clear that I wasn't going to answer him.

"What exactly is your problem with me?" He suddenly burst out from behind me, causing me to turn around just in time to see him throw his hands up in exasperation, "You seem to hate my fucking guts and I just can't figure out why! I've tried being nice, being funny, being helpful. Nothing seems to work! I don't get it! Give me a clue here, cause I'm dying!"

I scoffed loudly at his little rant that had drawn the attention of the few students left milling around the hallway, "A clue? You couldn't get a fucking clue if it was clue mating season and you were in a field full of horny clues and you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance. You're hopeless!"

"You're such a…" Jared seemed to struggle with himself about something now.

"Such a what?" I asked stepping closer to him and drawing myself up to my full 5'11 height.

"Bitch." He said, glaring down at me.

The hallway collapsed into silence for a couple of moments before an annoyingly high voice broke the silence.

"Well, what were you expecting, Jared?" Amy's voice asked, causing Jared's eyes to snap away from me for the first time since our argument started and look towards where Amy came slinking out from between the small crowd that had gathered, "Don't you remember our little joke from sophomore year?"

It's times like this I really wished I carried a gun.

* * *

A/N- I know! Don't kill me! Put away the torches and pitchforks please! I have no excuse for being such a crappy updater lately. My muse decided to take a vacation in Florida with a hot cabana boy. But I'm back now and ready to accept my reviews….pwease?

Review or I'm going to make you stay in a room with Amy Fink all day hearing her talk aboutpedicures.


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